Linksys is a brand of home and small office networking products and a company founded in 1988, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2003. Former Linksys products are now branded as Linksys by Cisco. Products currently and previously sold under the Linksys brand name include broadband and wireless routers, consumer and small business grade Ethernet switching, VoIP equipment, wireless internet video camera, AV products, network storage systems, and other products. Linksys products were widely available in North America off-the-shelf from both consumer electronics stores (CompUSA and Best Buy), internet retailers, and big-box retail stores (WalMart). Linksys' significant competition as an independent networking firm were D-Link and NetGear, the latter for a time being a brand of Cisco competitor Nortel.
In 2007, Cisco CEO John Chambers described the long-term plan to kill the independent Linksys brand: "It will all come over time into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept Linksys' brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there's very little advantage in that." From 2008, all Linksys products sold were packaged and branded as "Linksys by Cisco"; some former Linksys products were merged into the Valet brand (albeit with a large Cisco logo and smaller Linksys name still on the product). The former standalone Linksys website currently redirects to Cisco's home networking website. Small-business inquiries into former Linksys products are directed to Cisco's products and reseller network.
