D-Link

D-Link Corporation is a Taiwanese multinational networking equipment manufacturing corporation headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. It was founded in March 1986 in Taipei as Datex Systems Inc.

History

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

In 1988, Datex Systems Inc. released the industry's first peer-to-peer LANSmart Network Operating System, able to run concurrently with early networking systems such as Novell's NetWare and TCP/IP which most small network operating systems could not do at the time.

In 2007, it was the leading networking company in the small to medium business (SMB) segment worldwide with 21.9% market share. 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. In the same year, D-Link was released one of the first Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n draft 2.0 Wi-Fi router (DIR-655), which subsequently became one of the most successful draft 802.11n routers.

In 2013, D-Link released its flagship draft 802.11ac Wireless AC1750 Dual-Band Router (DIR-868L) which attained the fastest ever wireless throughput tested by SmallNetBuilder as of May 2013.

In April 2019, D-Link was named "Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure".

Products and services/solutions

D-Link's products are geared towards the networking and communications market. Its business products include switches, surveillance network cameras, firewalls, iSCSI SANs and business wireless, while consumer products cover consumer wireless devices, broadband devices, and the Digital Home devices (which include media players, storage, and surveillance camera/NVR).

D-Link is a global manufacturer of networking and telecommunications equipment.

In 1994, Datex Systems Inc. changed its name to D-Link Corporation. The company went public and was the first telecommunications company to begin trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. It is now traded on the TSEC and NSE stock exchanges.

D-Link devices run on a specialized operating system with the Linux kernel, which gives the rights and ability to change the firmware and create alternative firmware.

There are individual enthusiasts, as well as development teams of alternative firmware for a number of models of many manufacturers of telecommunications equipment. These firmware versions are popular with some customers, because they add functionality to the devices and also fix bugs more quickly than the official support services. The list of supported equipment also includes D-Link models. After changing the firmware to an alternative one, the device may fail.

D-Link is constantly optimizing the software of its devices and provides free access to new developments through its ftp-server.

There is a lot of information online[8] about configuring the D-link equipment, including the manufacturer pays a lot of attention to it. For example, there is a section F.A.Q. for frequently asked questions; here even a novice user can understand the principle of the devices setup, and if something goes wrong, the questions can be discussed on the company's forum.

The buyers of D-Link routers sometimes change the original firmware to something else, for instance DD-WRT.