D-Link Corporation was founded in 1986 in Taipei as Datex Systems Inc. It began as a network adapter vendor and has gone on to become a designer, developer and manufacturer of networking solutions for both the consumer and business markets.

In 2007 it was the leading networking company in the small to medium business (SMB) segment worldwide with 21.9% market share and in March 2008 it became the market leader in Wi-Fi product shipments worldwide, with 33% of the total market. In 2007 the company was featured in the ‘Info Tech 100', a listing of the world's best IT companies. It was also ranked as the 9th best IT company in the world for shareholder returns by BusinessWeek.

The company has 127 sales offices in 64 countries and 10 global distribution centres serving 100 countries worldwide. D-Link operates an indirect channel model, selling through distributors, resellers, retailers, VARS and Telcom Service Providers.

Its main competitors are Cisco, Netgear, HP and 3com.

History

D-Link Corporation changed its name from Datex Systems Inc. in 1994 when it went public and became the first networking company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. It is now publicly traded on the TSEC and NSE stock exchanges.

It was founded by seven people including Ken Kao, the late Chairman of D-Link. Tony Tsao was appointed CEO and President on 21st June 2008.

Product Range

D-Link's products are geared towards the networking and communications market. Its business products include switching, security and business wireless, whilst consumer products cover consumer wireless, broadband and the Digital Home (which includes media players, storage and surveillance).

It was the first networking company to launch Green Ethernet products, using power saving technology on its unmanaged smart switches and later, on its wireless routers.

Timeserver DDOS

In 2005, Poul-Henning Kamp, a FreeBSD developer, noticed that the Danish stratum 1 timeserver appeared to be the victim of a DDoS attack. Research into the matter revealed that a number of D-Link network products were hardwired to consult stratum 1 timeservers (which sit at the highest level of the NTP hierarchy, and are usually intended for the exclusive use of other timeservers) directly for NTP information, instead of relying on their respective ISPs' timeservers. This activity violated accepted practices as well as wishes of the administrators of higher-level timeservers, often incurring significant expense in the process.

D-Link is not the first company to engage in this behaviour. In 2003, Netgear caused similar problems for the University of Wisconsin, which were eventually resolved. Both incidents led to the formation of the NTP pool project.

This issue has since been amicably resolved by Kamp and D-Link.

GPL Violations

On 6 September, 2006, the gpl-violations.org project prevailed in court litigation against the German branch of the company regarding D-Link's alleged inappropriate and copyright infringing use of parts of the Linux kernel. The judgment finally provided the on-record, legal precedent that the GPL is valid and legally binding, and that it will stand up in court. However, while the court order provided restitution for the plaintiff, there was no injunction or other order preventing D-Link from continuing their offending activities.