Networking
Networking news — Wi-Fi 7, routers, homelab gear, and infrastructure.
Cisco Nexus 9000 Root RCE Is a Reminder: Your Fabric Switch Has a Backdoor Port You Didn't Ask For
Cisco disclosed CVE-2026-20212, a CVSS 9.8 unauthenticated root RCE in Silicon One-based Nexus 9000 switches caused by a service listening on an unrestricted IP. Ten switch models, 45 NX-OS releases, and a second wave of critical IOS XR CVEs landed the same week.
MikroTik Patches Another RouterOS Hole: And This Time It Snitches on You
MikroTik quietly patched an "important" RouterOS vulnerability on September 3 and, notably, isn't saying what it actually is yet. The more interesting part is what happens after you upgrade: RouterOS now scans itself for compromise and slaps a "Flagged" status on anything it finds dirty.
NETWORKING 537,000 Blocked Domains in 50KB of RAM: The $2 ESP32 DNS Sinkhole Is Real
A developer fit a Pi-hole-class blocklist, 537,000 domains, onto a $2 ESP32-C3 with no PSRAM by storing 40-bit hashes in flash instead of strings in RAM. It answers blocked lookups in ~10ms using roughly 50KB of memory, and it exposes just how bloated our DNS filtering boxes have been.
NETWORKING TP-Link Archer 8 Is the First Wi-Fi 8 Consumer Router: And It Still Needs FCC Permission to Exist
TP-Link announced the Archer 8 in May, the first consumer Wi-Fi 8 router with a real release date, but October availability in the US is conditional on FCC clearance that still hasn't arrived. Here's what the next wireless standard actually offers for serious home network deployments.
NETWORKING Asus Unveils ROG Rapture GT-BN98 Pro, Its First Wi-Fi 8 Router
Asus has shown off the ROG Rapture GT-BN98 Pro, its first Wi-Fi 8 gaming router, promising up to 2x median throughput and 2x better IoT coverage over Wi-Fi 7. The real story is not peak speed, it is reliability, multi-AP coordination, and enough wired I/O to keep a serious homelab from immediately bottlenecking.
NETWORKING MSI's RadiX BE19000 Puts an SSD Slot Inside a Wi-Fi 7 Router
MSI showed three new RadiX Wi-Fi 7 routers at Computex 2026, led by the BE19000 with 12-stream tri-band MLO, dual 10GbE, four 2.5GbE ports, and an internal PCIe SSD slot for lightweight NAS duties.
NETWORKING Xsight Labs Boots Vanilla Ubuntu on an 800G DPU, and That Matters More Than the Spec Sheet
ServeTheHome installed stock Ubuntu LTS on Xsight Labs' 64-core E1 DPU, then upgraded it to Ubuntu 26.04 without vendor drama. For infrastructure people, that is the difference between owning your network edge and renting mercy from a firmware pipeline.
NETWORKING UniFi OS 5.1.11: Built-In Ad Blocking, IPv6 WireGuard, and Auto Let's Encrypt Finally Land
Ubiquiti's UniFi OS 5.1.11 ships three features homelabbers have been running workarounds for since day one: built-in network-wide ad blocking via policy-based routing, native IPv6 WireGuard VPN client support, and automatic Let's Encrypt certificate management.
The FCC Just Banned Your Next Router: Foreign-Made Wi-Fi 7 Gear Is on the Clock
The FCC quietly added every foreign-manufactured consumer router to its Covered List on March 23, freezing new equipment authorizations for the entire Wi-Fi 7 generation. Homelab buyers have months, not years, before the inventory dries up, and the approval process the government built to replace it has a brutal track record.
NETWORKING Cisco Built a Quantum Switch That Runs Over Standard Telecom Fiber at Room Temperature
Cisco unveiled the Universal Quantum Switch on April 23, a working prototype that routes qubits across standard telecom fiber at room temperature, with under 4% fidelity loss. The networking layer of quantum computing is finally starting to look like, well, networking.
NETWORKING UniFi 'Beast' Surfaces at NAB 2026: 25G Routing, 100G Uplinks, and NVR Bays in One Box
Ubiquiti quietly parked four unannounced rackmount monsters at NAB 2026: the UDM Beast with 25G + integrated NVR storage, the Fortress Gateway Core with 100G QSFP28, an Enterprise 100G aggregation switch, and an Enterprise S PoE+++ access switch. None are officially launched. All of them rewrite the homelab calculus.
NETWORKING MikroTik Finally Ships Wi-Fi 7: The hAP be3 Media Lands at $179 With RouterOS, Thread, and 5x 2.5G
MikroTik's first Wi-Fi 7 router ships late April for $179, packing tri-band 802.11be, five 2.5G ports, a built-in Thread radio for Matter, and RouterOS v7 with full container support. The homelab crowd just got the cheapest serious Wi-Fi 7 router with a real CLI behind it.
NETWORKING Sub-$200 10GbE Switches Are Flooding the Market: Homelab Networking Just Changed
A wave of ultra-cheap 10GbE switches from brands like XikeStor, Sodola, and YuanLey is pushing 10-gigabit networking below $200. The homelab game just changed permanently.