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According to an early poster on Cisco's community forum:
I tried to login into my EA4500 today, and instead of the simple window that asks for the user name and password, I am getting a Cisco Connect Cloud login screen. It is very strange.
At the top it says: Cisco Connect Cloud/Powering Linksys Products
and below that:
Sign In If you have not yet created an account, click the 'Create Account' button in the upper right corner of the page.
Other posters quickly joined in.
The upshot being that an unrequested firmware update was pushed to the routers, and now they could only be configured through the cloud interface.
Needless to say, a significant number of people were less than impressed.
As well as the Cisco forum, Slashdot went pretty wild as did Whirlpool.
Of course the intention was entirely admirable - to simplify the administrative aspects of home routers and to "Use Cisco Connect Cloud to access your home network from anywhere, at any time, even from your mobile device. Connect new devices, set parental controls, get apps and more. It's easy with Cisco Connect Cloud."
The outcome was not. Users complained of the inability to retain fine-grained control of their devices, an inability to manage security as they wished and the necessity to use the cloud interface to configure a device that was sitting right beside them.
Furthermore, many larger organisations who relied on this device for use in small offices found themselves unable to manage it in accordance with their well-defined internal protocols.
Reading the forums, many users were threatening to return their newly purchased devices for a refund on the basis that it had been modified and was now not the equipment they purchased.
Fairly quickly, Cisco began to make a 'downgrade' firmware package available, on the proviso that it would become unsupported in the very near future.
