Linksys continues to wear the consumer albatross at Cisco. Cisco last year amid disappointing sales and integration and execution strategies. It killed two highly visible products after splashy introductions, laid off 550 people in that unit alone, yet pledged to stick by Linksys and make it a more integral and profitable component of its core strategy.

And then Cisco experienced the of two weeks ago in which it forced a firmware upgrade on users of its EA line of routers, held them in a Cisco Connect Cloud configuration service, and said it would monitor customer activity to uphold service terms and conditions.

This week's layoffs may be the chicken coming home to roost for that Linksys strategy error.

in Network World's Data Center section.