D-Link

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D-Link Corporation
Type Public (TSE: 2332)
Founded 1986
Headquarters Taipei, Taiwan
Key people Ken Kao, Chairman & CEO
Industry Computer Networks
Products Network hardware
Revenue ▲US$400 million (2006)
Website http://www.dlink.com.tw

D-Link Corporation is a Taiwanese company that manufactures wireless and Ethernet computer networking products for consumer and small/home office users. It is the largest wireless LAN provider in Europe and the People's Republic of China. The company has offices in over 90 countries around the world, and its corporate headquarters are in Taipei, Taiwan.

Contents

[edit] History
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D-Link was founded in 1986 as Datex [友訊科技], by seven people including Ken Kao, who remains as the CEO of D-Link Corporation.

The first OEM customer in 1991 was IBM, who were followed by Netgear, Intel and Nortel. In 2003, D-Link decided sold the company's OEM/ODM business to Alpha Networks, now run by a co-founder of Datex, John Lee.

Datex officially changed its name to D-Link Corporation in 1994, the year that it went public. The name change was brought about by difficulties explaining what Datex did, and the popularity of the D-Link brand.

[edit] 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.[1] 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.[2]

D-Link is not the first company to engage in this behaviour. In 2003, Netgear caused similar problems[3] 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.[4]

[edit] 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.[5] The judgment [6] 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Researchers expose source of DDoS attacks against DIX timeservers. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
  2. ^ Poul-Henning Kamp addresses D-Link directly. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
  3. ^ Netgear inadvertently DDOSes UWis. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
  4. ^ D-Link and Poul-Henning Kamp resolve NTP issue. Retrieved on 2006-05-02.
  5. ^ GPL Violations homepage - gpl-violations.org project prevails in court case on GPL violation by D-Link
  6. ^ http://www.jbb.de/urteil_lg_muenchen_gpl.pdf

[edit] External links