The FCC has cleared Asus routers, confirming the Defense Department found no security risk in the company's products. This conditional approval, valid until March 6, 2028, covers a wide range of Asus lines including RT, ROG, TUF Gaming, ExpertWiFi and ZenWiFi Mesh series, exempting them from a ban on foreign-made routers introduced in March. TP-Link has not received similar clearance despite arguing it operates as a US-headquartered business.
The FCC has given Asus 'conditional approval,' clearing its routers of security concerns raised by the Defense Department and exempting them from the agency's ban on foreign-made routers until March 2028. The exemption spans multiple Asus product lines including RT, ROG, TUF Gaming and ZenWiFi Mesh series. TP-Link, despite meeting with FCC officials and arguing it operates as a US company based in California, has not yet secured similar approval.
The FCC has issued a conditional approval covering Asus's entire wireless networking lineup, including its RT, ROG, TUF Gaming, ExpertWiFi and ZenWiFi router series, along with mesh systems, repeaters, access points and 5G MiFi devices. The approval, tied to a national security review by the Department of War, is valid for 18 months from issuance.
Dual-band routers transmit Wi-Fi simultaneously on two frequencies, 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz, to spread device traffic across separate channels instead of one shared lane. The 2.4GHz band covers longer distances and passes through walls better but runs slower and gets crowded, while the 5.0GHz band delivers faster speeds and more capacity at the cost of range. Most modern routers automatically assign devices to whichever band suits them, though some networks still show separate SSIDs for each frequency.
Attackers are combining two newly disclosed MikroTik RouterOS vulnerabilities, an SSH authentication bypass (CVE-2026-67276) and a privilege escalation bug (CVE-2026-86060), to seize full control of routers with SSH exposed to the internet. Poland's CERT, which found the flaws with AI assistance, calls the combined exploit 'MikroTrick' and confirms it is being used in real-world attacks. MikroTik patched the issues in RouterOS versions released September 3, alongside a related bandwidth-test flaw that can leak memory or crash devices.
Router shoppers often encounter confusing labels like dual-band and tri-band alongside terms such as Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7, and 6GHz. Dual-band routers broadcast on 2.4GHz and 5GHz, while tri-band routers add a third channel, either a second 5GHz band or, in newer Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 models, a dedicated 6GHz band. This extra band gives tri-band routers more overall bandwidth than dual-band alternatives.
When a home network has both an ISP-supplied gateway and a personal router or mesh system, leaving both in default settings can create double NAT, since the ISP gateway keeps routing traffic even when connected to another router. The fix is to either put the ISP gateway into bridge mode so it stops routing, or switch the personal router into access point mode so it only extends Wi-Fi while the gateway keeps routing.
Router manufacturers and security experts note that routers, as small computers, accumulate memory buildup and temporary files that degrade performance over time. Restarting a router clears this cache, refreshes connections with your modem and internet provider, forces a rescan of less congested Wi-Fi channels, and disrupts malware or lingering connections attackers could exploit. This differs from a factory reset, which erases all saved settings including network name and password.
MikroTik simultaneously released RouterOS 7.23.4, 7.24.2 and 6.49.21 on September 3, 2026, each flagging an unspecified 'important security update' without disclosing details. A security researcher reverse-engineered the binary diffs across versions and identified two exploitable flaws: a low-exponent RSA signature forgery leading to an mtget buffer overflow, and an SSH authentication bug where a username value of -2 grants a read-only session elevated privileges, enabling full command execution on the router.
After the oxc team shipped official Rust-based React Compiler support on August 4, 2026, a developer migrated a 1,036-file React Router codebase (Outlyne, a website builder) to it via the new native option in @vitejs/plugin-react v6.1.0. The compiler step dropped from 14.3 seconds to 0.81 seconds, and overall build time improved roughly 2.4x. Projects not using the Vite React plugin directly, such as those running React Router in framework mode, can adopt the change through the separate @acusti/vite-plugin-react-compiler package.
Nvidia has released Personal AI Router (PAIR), a free open-source tool that finds compatible computers on a home network and links them together to run local AI inference tasks through apps like Ollama and LM Studio. It supports Nvidia RTX 20-series and newer GPUs, RTX Pro and DGX Spark systems, plus Apple M4 chips or later, and only taps machines when they're idle so it doesn't interfere with other use.
TP-Link showed off its first Wi-Fi 8 devices, the Archer 8 Ultra router and Deco 8 Ultra mesh system, ahead of the IEEE 802.11bn standard's finalization. The Archer 8 Ultra promises up to 19Gbps wireless speeds with 18 antennas, while a three-pack Deco 8 Ultra mesh setup can cover nearly 9,800 square feet and handle over 200 devices. Pricing remains undisclosed, but preorders for the Archer 8 Ultra begin September 30th in select regions, with the Deco 8 Ultra and other Wi-Fi 8 accessories arriving in early-to-mid 2027.
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