On an online forum we frequent, someone just posted about a frustrating time they had trying to get a Linksys home router working for a friend. The writer is a Mac person through-and-through, but had been convinced to spend half the cash and get a Linksys router instead of a fancy Airport Extreme, since they do effectively the same jobs. (Actually, the Linksys is typically more capable, but that’s irrelevant for most users.)

Well, there’s a complication now to this whole affair that is clearly the work of pointy-haired jerkoff marketing drones: the instructions to Linksys routers (and, we presume, D-link and NetGear) now include a step to install software, which of course naive and nontechnical users attempt to do. And that’s where the problem surfaces.

Routers like these have, since their initial introduction in the home market, included very full-featured (and simple!) web-based configuration tools. Anyone on the router’s network with the router’s address and the password (both printed on the documentation) can configure it to behave any way they want. No software is required at the PC level at all to configure the router, and no router-specific software is ever be required at the PC level to simply USE a given network. You DO need a network card and drivers for said, but for the last 10 years or so these have typically been included with every PC and Mac sold. It’s an industry standard, and this interoperability is a key part of why networks have become so popular and pervasive.

What this means is that for pretty much every router on the market, a user can unbox it, throw the CD away without unsealing the envelope, plug it in, and start using it immediately. They would be well served to adjust the router to improve security — changing the password to the web console is mandatory; setting the router so that only users connected by wire can use the management console is also a great idea — but the baseline function and factory configuration of pretty much every consumer router we’ve seen since 2000 has been such that “plug it in and go” will work just fine. A simple sheet of instructions walking the user through the advisable configuration changes is really all the “installation” such a machine needs.

Instead of embracing this altogether tremendous boon — really, how common is this sort of ease in technology? — Linksys, et. al., have added a wholly useless step that, in our experience, is the cause of 90%+ of all home-network configuration problems. (And we get calls. Trust us.) We’ve fixed innumerable home network setups by ignoring the “setup” program, going straight to “New Network Connection,” and accepting the defaults.

Oddly, the one home router we can think of that actually DOES require special software for administration comes from an unlikely source: Apple. The Airport doesn’t, at last count, have a web console, and therefore requires the Airport Administration Utility for configuration and control. This is a pretty huge misstep for Apple that for some reason they have yet to correct. It’s pretty bizarre when hardcore nerd companies like Linksys can present a better out-of-box experience than the masters in Cupertino. (It’s also still funny that Airports do less and cost more than the other-brand equivalents from the geek triumvirate of Linksys/DLink/Netgear, and probably justify this price bump on “usability” grounds.)

So, can anybody tell us just exactly what the hell these companies are thinking with this bullshit install step? Seriously, why shoot themselves in the foot like this? Whisky Tango Foxtrot, people?

Update: RN from Portland writes:

A native app can configure your machine’s networking so that it can find the network device. That’s a good reason to have to install something from a CD.

We disagree. First, configuring one’s own machine is distinct from configuring the router, which is what we’re really talking about here.

Second, even if local configuration is the router company’s bag, including instructions to create a new network profile, or use your machine’s “automatic” setting, is a far better plan than insisting on some baroque package that requires installation, together with all the bullshit that entails on Windows (it’s merely annoying and unnecessary on Macs).

In the Apple world, finding a new basic networking device is bone simple — Macs all have an “Automatic” profile included by default in the Network locations list. Even if the user isn’t set to use it when they install the router, making the change requires only 3 clicks.