My expert advice: Don’t buy a router until we know more about the FCC ban. – It’s Going Viral in 2026

Key findings:

• The Federal Communications Commission has banned the sale of new foreign-made routers in the United States. This procedure applies to almost all Wi-Fi routers currently available on the US market.
• After speaking with seven industry experts, I advise holding off on buying a new router if possible.
• Under current regulations, banned routers will no longer receive required firmware and security software updates after March 1, 2027.
• The FCC’s action has effectively frozen the entire market while router companies struggle to gain approval.
• More specific information about which router companies will be banned is expected to become clearer over the next month or two.

It’s not often that we get breaking news in the router world, but the FCC’s decision ban the sale of foreign-made routers in the US is absolutely unprecedented.

The full order applies to any router in which any stage of “manufacture, assembly, design and development” occurs outside the US – in other words, to virtually any router you can buy right now. The argument is that they pose “unacceptable risks” to national security. Ironically, the order also prevents existing foreign-made routers from receiving critical security updates after March 1, 2027.

The ban does not apply to routers that have already been approved by the FCC, only to new models that have not yet been approved. This means that every router that was available before the order was still available today, and router companies can still restock them using existing manufacturing processes.

Essentially, the FCC is freezing the market for Wi-Fi routers. As William Budington, a technologist at the digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me, “This is using an extremely crude tool.”

While previous FCC bans were limited to specific companies, such as last year’s ban on TP-Link routers, this one affects the entire industry. So where does that leave someone who needs a new one? Wi-Fi router? Is it worth buying a model you like in case it sells out? Or is it better to wait and see which companies the FCC considers foreign?

I know what I would do, but I checked my advice with four cybersecurity experts. It turns out we agree.

My advice: hold off on buying a new router for now.

When I first saw the FCC announcement, I couldn’t stop thinking about the chaos it would bring to the US router market. When I tried to figure out which manufacturers should be considered “foreign”, it quickly became clear just how deep the international router supply chains are.

Understanding the scope of the ban

Take Netgear. Although it is a US-based company, it manufactures routers in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Taiwan. With the exception of Starlink—the company says its new routers are made entirely in Texas, according to the BBC—I couldn’t find a single domestic router brand.

I have no problem recommending routers made overseas. After all, they’ve already gone through the FCC authorization process, and I haven’t seen conclusive evidence that any brand of router has more hardware vulnerabilities than another.

Thomas Pace, CEO of cybersecurity company NetRise, told me last year during an interview about the potential Ban TP-Link: “We analyzed a huge number of TP-Link firmwares. We find all sorts of things, but we find all sorts of things.”

I just finished testing, reviewing and evaluating over 30 routers and after years of resistance I have finally come to the conclusion that Wi-Fi 7 routers are worth the money for the speeds you get. While I stand by my recommendations, given this ban, the router you buy today may be useless a year from now.

Future security threat

Then I saw the FCC’s public notice of the ban, which states that manufacturers can continue to provide software and firmware updates “at least until March 1, 2027.” This means that if you have a foreign-made router—in other words, if you own any router—it won’t be able to receive security patches after this deadline.

That’s why I think it’s smart to wait to buy if you can. Keeping your router’s firmware up to date is an important part of protecting your home network. If you buy routers from a company that is not exempt from this ban, you risk receiving an unsecured device within a year.

It’s an ironic side effect of an order ostensibly designed to keep Americans safe: They may no longer be able to get the latest security patches.

“If you limit people’s ability to get security updates, you’re making the problem worse, not making it better,” Alan Butler, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told me. “A lot of these routers will be pumpkins in a year if they don’t extend this failure.”

Having said that you can update the firmware”at least But until we know more about which companies the FCC considers foreign and which will be exempt, I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending spending the money on a new router right now.

“The risk is very real,” said Rick Ferguson, vice president of security intelligence at cybersecurity firm Forescout. “If you find yourself in a situation where that update pipeline is disabled, you’ll definitely have to consider whether you want to continue using that device.”

“The risk persists over time because there is a chance that new vulnerabilities will be discovered that you cannot patch,” added Daniel Dos Santos, vice president of research at Forescout.

Tips for Urgent Router Needs

If your old router has stopped working, I won’t advise you to wait for clarity from the FCC to get back to Wi-Fi—the time frame for concern is in years rather than months. A good compromise might be to buy an older budget router rather than the latest Wi-Fi 7 model you’ve had your eye on. But if you can afford to wait a month or two, it’s worth exercising some caution.

“I think this is going to become a mess very quickly,” Butler said.

This is the most confusing part of the process that we are likely to see. As the dust settles in the coming weeks, we’ll likely get better information about which routers will still be safe to use a year from now.

What if you rent a router from your ISP?

Where does this order leave 70% of Americans who rents internet equipment from their internet providers? The FCC ban will impact them as well, since they also rely heavily on foreign-made routers.

Essentially, my advice is no different than advice for people who own routers: don’t panic and wait to see how things go. If you haven’t upgraded your hardware in a few years, now might be a good time to call your internet provider and see what options are available. But it’s unlikely they’ll actively replace them themselves, says Doug Dawson, a veteran broadband analyst and author of the industry blog POTs and PAN.

“I don’t see a wholesale replacement of these things because it’s too much money,” Dawson told me. “My guess is that before the firmware update deadline, they’ll release those three days before then and then cross their fingers that they don’t start seeing problems.”

Expert Opinion: Is Your Current Router Safe to Use?

When I surveyed four cybersecurity experts, I was surprised to find that they generally supported the FCC’s adoption of theoretical router security measures but were critical of their implementation.

“It will affect a lot of innocuous products to stop the real problem,” Budington said. “It’s also not particularly targeted since routers are only one part of the problem, along with IoT devices.”

Concern about national security risk

The FCC says foreign-made routers were “directly implicated” in Volt, Flax and Salt typhoon cyber attacks. These attacks don’t necessarily target the average person’s data, but they can turn your router into a tool that can be used for malicious attacks.

“An individual user who owns a router probably doesn’t even know anything about it,” Butler said. “It happens in the background, without them knowing, and it doesn’t necessarily affect them directly in any way that they can notice.”

In the Salt Typhoon attack, hackers accessed the data of millions of people through their Internet service providers, seeking to gain access to information through court-authorized wiretaps. This was a particularly bold example of a proven hacking approach called “spray and pray”: find the default login credentials and try them on as many connected devices as possible.

“It could only be one router out of 5,000, but it could be bingo,” Sergei Shikevich, threat intelligence manager at Check Point Research, told me about these types of attacks. “Mostly it’s simple. In many cases, you don’t have to be a very accomplished actor or even a nation state to be successful.”

How You Can Secure Your Router Right Now

It’s just as easy for hackers to gain access through your router’s default credentials as it is for you to change your own settings. Most routers have an app that allows you update your login credentials from there, but you can also enter your router’s IP address into the URL. These are different from your Wi-Fi name and password, which should also be changed every six months or so. It’s also a good idea to update your firmware regularly, which you can do automatically in your router settings or by manually downloading updates from your router’s app or web portal.

When will we know more?

I would like to point out another case where the Federal Communications Commission ordered a complete ban on an entire category of consumer products, but nothing like this had ever happened before. Manufacturers can apply for “conditional approval,” and they will likely work behind the scenes to achieve this. When I contacted the Federal Communications Commission for more information about the order, I was directed to the Coverage List FAQ page.

I think in the next month or so we will know more details about which companies are banned. This assessment was confirmed by two industry observers I spoke with. But the wait could drag on even longer. Budington told me he thinks router companies can wait until the ban is lifted rather than rush into trying to move their entire supply chains to the US.

Regardless of how things pan out, we’ll likely look back on this as the most chaotic chapter in the history of the router ban. If you don’t need a new router immediately, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to make a more informed decision in a month.