It's bad enough to buy a quality, name-brand component and have it die on you in less than a year. It's even worse to try and get a warranty repair on it, only to find out that the part you bought was actually counterfeit and you're completely out of luck. Such was the motivation behind a recent crackdown, in which Canadian and U.S. authorities seized a plethora of fake Cisco hardware.
With an estimate value of $76 million, the U.S. and Canada conducted over 400 raids to reclaim this fake equipment, a large portion of which was fingered as coming from China. That's quite a bit of fake equipment, and from a single vendor to boot. It makes you wonder how many times you may have bought a knockoff without knowing it.