(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Wi-Fi routers built or designed in foreign countries by the likes of Asus, TP-Link, and other companies consistently top our recommendation lists as some of the best-value networking products available. But now that the FCC has banned the sale of any new Wi-Fi routers that are not US-made, citing national security concerns, you might be worried about which router brand to trust.
As the editor who leads PCMag's networking hardware reviews and testing, I understand that the ban is concerning. You should know though, that it only applies to new routers or other networking products (like mesh systems) that are primarily manufactured, developed, or designed outside the United States. So we're not withdrawing our recommendations of existing foreign-made routers at this time. We still feel confident recommending standouts made outside the US, such as the TP-Link Archer AXE75, our current Editors' Choice.
I'll walk you through everything you need to know about the new restrictions on foreign-made routers and what they mean for you.
Why Did the FCC Ban Asus and TP-Link Routers?
Security researchers have long been concerned about potential vulnerabilities in networking products that hackers can exploit, mostly from brands that are not well-known in the US. A 2018 report suggested that a hacker was eavesdropping on network traffic from more than 7,500 vulnerable routers from MikroTik, which mostly makes enterprise gear but also sells consumer routers. However, known vulnerabilities have also been discovered in products from many big-name brands, including Asus and TP-Link. For instance, in 2023, researchers discovered one such vulnerability in the TP-Link Archer AX21 Wi-Fi 6 router and another that affects several Asus models.
Potential vulnerabilities in routers made in China or containing Chinese components have become a greater concern since 2024, when an influential report from the Hudson Institute, a think tank, suggested that Chinese-made Wi-Fi routers could serve as an entry point for state-sponsored hackers. The report mentioned, however, that there was no evidence of such involvement on the part of companies like TP-Link.
“Indeed, any suggestion that Washington should mandate US-made routers or ban Chinese-made ones is beyond premature,” the report said. Still, it led federal lawmakers to call for the US Commerce Department to investigate TP-Link in August 2024. The Commerce, Defense, and Justice Departments did just that, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources. The investigation was prompted, according to the report, by concerns that TP-Link doesn’t address security flaws and ships routers to customers without fixing potential exploits.
In response, TP-Link acknowledged that its products do contain vulnerabilities but insisted that it was working with industry experts to mitigate them.
"We fully acknowledge that vulnerabilities exist across the industry," a TP-Link spokesperson said. "However, contrary to claims of widespread vulnerabilities, comparative data places TP-Link on par with, or in some cases ahead of, other major industry players in terms of security outcomes."
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)No ban focused singularly on TP-Link or any other foreign router maker was ever enacted. Rumors earlier this year suggested that the government decided to pause the TP-Link investigation to avoid angering China.
However, on March 23, 2026, the FCC enacted a much broader ban, extending to “all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries.” Unless the FCC carves out significant exceptions to the ban, or companies are able to quickly onshore assembly of new products, it will affect nearly all consumer routers, even those made by US companies like Netgear and SpaceX, which currently assemble many of their products abroad.
Routers assembled in the US using foreign components will not be banned unless the router's "modular transmitter" is separately on the FCC's list of banned products, the commission said.
Is It Still Legal to Buy or Use a Foreign-Made Router?
Yes, if you have a foreign-manufactured router in your home, you can still use it. Banning routers that are already in people's homes would be impractical, even if the government felt it was necessary. You can also continue to buy previously approved routers not manufactured in the US.
"Today’s action does not impact a consumer’s continued use of routers they previously acquired,” the FCC said. “Nor does it prevent retailers from continuing to sell, import, or market router models approved previously through the FCC’s equipment authorization process.”
Why Do We Still Recommend Foreign-Made Routers?
We are standing by our recommendations of foreign-made networking products where appropriate based on our own deep cybersecurity expertise. It suggests that, based on available evidence, foreign-made products are certainly vulnerable to exploits, but no more so than domestic competitors'.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)“Any router, from any source, could be compromised at the firmware level,” says Neil Rubenking, our principal security writer who has evaluated antivirus and other security software for more than 20 years and serves on the board of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO). Rubenking says it would be possible for investigators to determine if TP-Link router firmware is compromised on a large scale.
“Disassembling firmware code and understanding what it does is totally feasible, though it takes rare skill,” he said. “After analyzing the firmware of one router and finding it to be safe or not, [investigators] could simply take a hash of the entire code block and match it to other routers.”
Private researchers routinely conduct such investigations, and if they discover flaws, manufacturers typically address them quickly. The fact that no such flaws have been discovered so far, either by public or private investigators, gives us reassurance that foreign products aren’t uniquely compromised.
(Credit: maybeiii / Shutterstock)To make a given router more vulnerable than it would otherwise be, it would need to be physically accessible to a hacker before it is sold to a customer and placed into service, Rubenking adds.
“If that happens in the factory, well, it's the easiest,” he notes. Rubenking is not worried about state actors doing something like that to compromise routers intended for consumers. But he sees a ban on government use of routers suspected to be physically accessible to hackers as reasonable.
We will continue to closely monitor the situation and adjust our stance as necessary. But armed with the above knowledge, for the time being, we’re confident we can continue recommending routers and other networking products built or designed abroad.
Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Wi-Fi Security
Ultimately, our confidence in foreign networking products still relies on an uncomfortable reality: Networking hardware, like other devices that connect to the internet, have potential for security vulnerabilities. Since nearly everyone has internet-connected devices these days, it’s critical to explore best practices for keeping them safe, no matter which company designed and built them.
This includes taking preventive measures, such as setting up the latest WPA3 security on your router or mesh system and using proxy servers and VPNs to ensure no one can snoop on your internet traffic. You can follow these easy steps to see who's connected to your Wi-Fi and boot them off if necessary, and you can also take measures to protect yourself on public Wi-Fi.
Another uncomfortable reality is that you may very well get hacked. If you do, it can be a painful experience, to be sure, but we've outlined several ways to make sure it doesn’t happen again.