Cisco thinks it can solve consumers' problems in one trip to the store and simultaneously rise above the price wars. It won't do this by building the Linksys or Cisco equivalent of Apple stores, but will instead train sales staff at retailers such as Best Buy, Wingo said. Sales representatives should start asking about a shopper's home network as soon as they start shopping for anything that might need the network, such as a game console, he said.

It shouldn't be too hard for Cisco to make its Linksys routers into the central device in a home network, even with multiple vendors' equipment, said Parks Associates analyst Kurt Scherf. But the key to doing so will be selling them as gateways through service providers, he said.

"Consumers are much more happy to allow their service providers to be the IT manager," Scherf said. "You will still buy products off the shelf and connect them to a home network, but gateways will be doing the managing and monitoring."

Scherf applauded Cisco's strategy of helping train retailers to sell networks and networked products, which he said was a key to the success of Linksys before it was acquired by Cisco in 2003.

But he wasn't so quick to dismiss wired networks in homes, citing the wide variety of types of homes and infrastructure around the world. "I don't think you can say that one networking technology is going to win," Scherf said.