Over the weekend there were lots of reports of the two Linksys Extenders (DMA2100 and DMA2200) not powering up and it seemed like somehow Linksys killed their now discontinued products. It turned out to effect only US users only and it was caused by Cisco (now owners of Linksys) turning off one of their servers that the Extenders uses to check for updates, so during the power up sequence the extender could not find the update server and just locked up.

There were workarounds which involved removing the Extenders ability to connect to the internet but finally Cisco have responded and got the server back on line (see this thread on TGB). So it looks like the Extenders are working again without the need to hack any IP settings but I have to say its a pretty poor design to have the box freeze if the update server is not available.  Who knows how long they will keep the server ip up and running, I would imagine at some point they may think no-one would notice if they switched it off again.

BTW I love how Ed Bott labelled it Extendergate!

Update: Engadget have an offical quote from Linksys:

Yes we did have to take the server down for maintenance and during the reboot realized we had an issue with a certificate server. All is fixed now and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused to our customers.

 

Leave a Reply