[Godel_unicode]

> Don't the same companies make enterprise routers and consumer routers?

Kinda but not really (the consumer routers are usually made by subsidiaries, e.g. linksys -> Cisco)

> Don't they presumably employ the same engineers to write software across them?

For the most part no, but much more importantly the margins are much worse on consumer gear. Race-to-the-bottom pricing means race-to-the-bottom quality and race-to-the-bottom patch cycles (the last one is probably the most important). Add in that there is a deliberate effort to not make low-margin consumer gear not cannibalize high-margin business/enterprise gear.

A noted exception to this is NetGate, whose pfSense hardware runs the same OS with the same engineering up and down the stack. Probably not the best idea for a normal consumer to buy, though.

[kevin_thibedeau]

We now know that NetGate has questionable coding standards. Best to pass on them.

[Godel_unicode]

I'm not sure we know any such thing? They're certainly guilty of insufficient ideological purity with regard to open source, but that's hardly the same thing.