Cisco has made a remarkable mistake, during manufacturing of its C800 series routers the status LEDs were forgotten. LED lights in routers are common practice and can be used to monitor the device from the outside. They usually show whether the device is powered on and if it's receiving or sending data.
The C800 series routers from Cisco are now assembled without those LEDs. The C896, C897 and C898 should have contained the blinking lights but the networking giant forgot to put the LEDs on the list of required materials. The manufacturer therefore didn't order them and didn't add them to the device.
Cisco writes, "two LEDs and two resistors were not added to the Bill of Materials and therefore those LEDs and resistors are not populated on production units. As a result, GE8 and SFP8 WAN ports do not provide visual indication of the link status or data activity. The user is unable to look at the router in order to determine whether the port is active or not active.
Cisco has posted a page on their website that it will be shipping replacements to affected customers.
