Infographic: 25 Years of Linksys Routers

Iconic networking company Linksys is celebrating its 25th birthday today.

President and CEO Victor Tsao founded the company in 1988 with his wife in their home garage. Within five years, Linksys surpassed Intel, 3Com, and Netgear in the retail market as the top networking hardware manufacturer.

"I firmly believe linking people together with the use of the computer could create a world within which people could more easily share ideas, communicate and create," he said in discussing what inspired him to create Linksys. "To achieve this end goal, however, we had to offer an end solution that was both affordable as well as easy to use.”

Cisco Systems saw an opportunity to advance in the consumer networking market with Linksys and acquired the company back in 2003 for $500 million. In an effort to get back to its core enterprise networking roots and move away from the consumer space, Cisco recently sold the Linksys division to Belkin for an undisclosed sum.

While the Belkin sale prompted questions about the future quality of Linksys products (myself included), there is no question that this is a smart purchase by Belkin. Belkin is reportedly going to acquire about 35 percent more of the consumer networking space market share.

Linksys also has a proven track record of success and innovation. Many networking nerds recall their early Linksys routers with fondness, especially the popular WTR54G series, which network enthusiasts have been modding  and flashing with third-party firmware for many years.

The infographic below lists all of the Linksys routers since 1999. How many have you owned?

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