back to article Cisco forgot to install two LEDs in routers

Cisco has forgotten to install all the light emitting diodes (LEDs) in some routers. The Register understands that the LTE-enabled C800 integrated service routers. models C896, C897, and C898, lack LEDs that indicate traffic is passing over the WAN. Cisco has 'fessed up to the mess in a field notice that says "... two LEDs and …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Idiots

    They should have done an Apple and claimed it was a feature - to reduce carbon emissions.

  2. Ralphe Neill
    Facepalm

    Cisco at it again

    And let us not forget THIS glorious failure ..

    http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/09/07/this-hilarious-cisco-fail-is-a-network-engineers-worst-nightmare/

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Cisco at it again

      Been there, done it, this one is real.

  3. djack

    Not Just Cisco

    I've got a Dell laptop that has no LEDs on the network port. I'm not sure if it was an error or penny-pinching.

    I didn't know about the omission until I was with a client trying to find a live network cable.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not Just Cisco

      penny pinching. Seen it on the odd other laptop as well.

    2. Ben Boyle

      Re: Not Just Cisco

      I have a Dell laptop (E5550) that has a numeric keypad, but no num lock indicator light. Caps lock and the hardware mic mute have lights built into the keys but not num lock.

      FFS.

      Ended up finding a bit of software that puts an indicator in the system tray.

  4. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    LED's

    This is where they are:-

    http://karenandmelody.com/2006d-IMG_8193.jpg

  5. The Vociferous Time Waster

    Doozers

    Cisco are full of Doozers right now:

    http://subnet.tools/the-best-bug-i-have-ever-seen/

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Doozers

      Looks like de-skilling is in progress.

    2. Intractable Potsherd

      Re: Doozers

      I like the way that it is the cable boots that are "too far forward", not a shitty design decision on the device (I'd hit that button every time when putting a cable in)!

  6. Allan George Dyer
    Joke

    Wait...

    There's a command line interface for soldering?

    I want to learn!!!

    1. Daniel B.

      Re: Wait...

      Yes. To solder LED just type

      solder led

      To unsolder it,

      no solder led

      :)

      1. DropBear
        Trollface

        Re: Wait...

        "solder led"

        That's blatantly unrealistic. Something believable as a properly flexible bare minimum might look like this:

        sudo solder LED --led-color green --regular-intensity --mounting smd --case 1206 --side-view -I /home/myroom/wall\ part\ drawers -I /home/myroom/desk\ drawer -I /home/myroom/junk\ parts\ bin --use-tweezers --use-leaded-solder --use-extra-flux | fume_extractor > /dev/null

        ...with a few hundred additional entirely optional parameters that every user worth his salt ought to know by heart because that's the way Real Men do it, obviously.

  7. jake Silver badge

    So basically ...

    ... Cisco has sacked what little QA/QC that they had left? Ta for the info.

  8. Jim McDonald

    LED free solder?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I love reading about stuff like this. It's always good to know there's other humans out there making lots of mistakes like I do... unlike the people in comments sections on every website everywhere whom are all perfect :)

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      This is a team making the mistake though.

      At least one hopes it is a team..

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        We love reading about stuff like this. It's always good to know there are other human teams out there making lots of mistakes like ours does... unlike the people in comments sections on every website everywhere whom are all part of perfect teams :)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good Luck

    with getting peeps to solder SMD leds in place, as well as chip resistors. its not an easy task with a weller 100w soldering gun..

    PS, to our American contingent, why the quiet "L" in the American use of the word "solder"??

    1. Steve Aubrey

      Re: Good Luck

      I think it evens everything out for you (generically, at least) pronouncing lieutenant as "LEFtenant", which we Yanks insist on pronouncing as "LOOtenant".

      (Yes - opening myself up for all the "loo" jokes now. Unavoidable, really.)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good Luck

      Ho Solder/20 here, and yes I've soldered 0603 LEDs before.

      100w soldering gun won't do it, you need a solder station with adjustable temperature and ideally 63/37 40 gauge solder as lead free tends to wreck the diodes.

    3. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: "why the quiet "L" in the American use"

      Why the extra 'u' in words that end in 'or'?

      1. 404

        Re: "why the quiet "L" in the American use"

        Lieutenant as in 'lew', like 'in lieu of' - you don't say 'in lef of', correct?

        Example of Southern craziness: They pronounce bedroom suite as 'bedroom suit' - I'd hear them advertising bedroom suits on the car radio and I'm WTF is a bedroom suit? Pajamas? Some damn expensive pjs... They don't use 'peTIT' for the word petite...

    4. Captain DaFt

      Re: Good Luck

      "PS, to our American contingent, why the quiet "L" in the American use of the word "solder"??"

      <sjw mode>Hey, that "l" is differently enabled! And despite its lack of sound, it finds gainful employment in other words too, such as "Salmon".

      Don't be such a letterist!</sjw mode>

  11. KrakowKaz

    Less blinkenlights, but no real effect

    While it'll make the rack less lively and colorful, most admins aren't going to be looking at the device for confirmation that it's working. SNMP and flow enabled devices (NetFlow for Cisco) are going to be monitored and their traffic analyzed with the various network monitoring solutions out there. Something like NetCrunch (Cisco partner to boot) will not only give you deep traffic analytics, but also has pretty blinkenlights dashboards to soothe management.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: " most admins aren't going to be looking at the device for confirmation that it's working"

      Except when you plug it in initially. When you're looking at a network rack or in a networking closet, are you going to be staring at your monitoring software, or the port you just plugged a cable into? Besides, most of the time the physical cabling is done by low-level technician and the actual software side of things is done by a different person / group who are waiting on word from that technician that the cable is plugged in and working. And given that this is port 8 of a block of interfaces, I'd imagine that there've been several cable monkeys wasting hours of time trying to figure out why the other seven ports seem to be working but that one does not.

      1. Robert Heffernan

        Re: " most admins aren't going to be looking at the device for confirmation that it's working"

        Not to mention the C800 series are SOHO/SMB routers so chances are it won't be in a rack full of gear with SNMP enabled and teams of admins pouring over it keeping an eye on every bit that runs past.

        It will be some poor secretary in a plumbers office on the phone to their nephew asking why they can't search for google!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "looking at the device for confirmation that it's working"

          "the C800 series are SOHO/SMB routers"

          Does that mean these are actually Linksys designs with an expensive badge added afterwards?

          1. Rob Daglish

            Re: "looking at the device for confirmation that it's working"

            Doubt it. I started working on C801/803 ISDN routers in 1999, and they were most definitely Cisco boxes - proper IOS and everything - I'm still running an 897 at home, which was especially nice when TalkTalk wrote to me to tell me that they couldn't scan my router for security issues as they couldn't connect to it...

            1. Robert Heffernan

              Re: "looking at the device for confirmation that it's working"

              Yeah, I have an 865 myself. Most definitely full IOS.. Great little router, really helped cutting my teeth on CISCO config. Now I have the most complicated home network ever... (two fully managed switches, two routers, and House LAN, WIFI and Shed LAN on seperate subnets with full routing and access control/QoS)

  12. Linker3000
    Boffin

    Meanwhile: anonymous faux engineer in stock shot burns the crap out of C109 for no apparent reason.

    /Claims: "I was told to make sure the cap was on the hot side"

    1. foxbatgb

      > Meanwhile: anonymous faux engineer in stock shot burns the crap out of C109 for no apparent reason

      :)

      That photo looks like a composite for me. The iron is too much in focus for the narrow focal plane on the PCB and there's something 'wrong' looking about the tip in relation to its surroundings.

      1. PhilBuk

        "there's something 'wrong' looking about the tip in relation to its surroundings."

        It's clean!

        Phil.

  13. JaitcH
    FAIL

    My Chinese assembly shop contractor ...

    always makes a couple of pre-production boards, tests them and them sends them back to us for acceptance.

    What's with CISCO - used to be so reliable. At least you would have expected the NSA to query non-functioning indicators.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: My Chinese assembly shop contractor ...

      I'm assuming that the problem is automated manufacturing. The board were very likely populated by a pick and place machine, moved to soldering by conveyor belt, then tested with an automated bed-o-nails. Since those tests would've passed, the board would've been pushed to assembly and screwed in the case by assembly line workers who neither know nor care about what they are putting together, regardless of nationality.

      The problem likely stemmed from an electrical engineer cleaning up the gerber file from the approved prototype and accidentally cut the two LEDs and forgot to paste them; accidentally moved them off of the board; or maybe deleted them along with the added programming and testing points / LEDs that were on the prototype the production model was based on (I would believe that the testing folk would use port 8's LEDs to indicate specific test conditions and ended up marked as such and being removed when going to production). I've done such things on my own private projects when I'm going over the schematics several times and not under a single deadline, someone working 50+ hours a week could easily make these kinds of mistakes late Friday night before the boards go into production.

      But what bothers me is that Cisco isn't using ports with built-in LEDs like everyone else does, especially since external LEDs cost more in terms of both engineering and manufacturing.

  14. cortland
    Facepalm

    It loos very much like

    something done by a bean-counter cutting costs. Heh!

  15. Chris Parsons
    Headmaster

    German

    Pretending English plurals follow the same rules as some German ones, is really, really childish and irritating.

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