Once I took the site down, I had many requests from users to join the site, so I have put it back up. I’ll leave it in the background for now and post when ever I feel like.
Well after more than a year of blogging about Dlink and their products, I am no longer motivated to continue blogging about either.
I no longer buy DLink as they insist on using the ubicom platform for their devices and I have yet to see a stable build for their firmware.
Even their new products are based off the same platform and so will have the same issues as their old. I suspect their late CEO was pushed out for the decision/agreement to lock in ubicom which cost them dearly based on their financial results published earlier.
I’ll leave the site going for a little while so as to allow people to grab what ever firmware they need.
The only one bit of advise I can give you all as home network consumers, only buy devices based off the Broadcom platform. This means netgear, linksys/Cisco, Buffalo and believe it or not, apple. Broadcom platforms appear to be the most stable and offer alternative firmware builds.
Good Bye and all the best.
Really bad news fellow DLink consumers;
I have had an interesting discussion with someone who develops firmware for network equipment. He/She suggests that there will be no more scheduled firmware releases for the DIR855, DIR655 and the DGL4500. DLink will most likely continue to sell these products until superseded by the upcoming new models, they should continue to provide technical support but there are likely no developers working on the current series product firmwares. The developers will all be allocated to the new upcoming models and subsequent firmware releases once the products are released.
You are most likely wrong if you think you are getting any more new firmwares unless something very drastic happens and the developers will need to be re-allocated to these products.
I do not know if DLink use internal developers or if they outsource the development but this is a sad turn of events for DLink customers.
Today I was asked why it had been so long since my last poll and I said, “there’s no issue to take a vote on at the moment”.
However, later on in the day, a colleague came to me asking what brand router they should get as they wanted an upgrade. I immediately said, which ever brand you settle on, DO NOT CHOOSE DLINK. I then began to explain to him all the quality issues with the firmware, how they don’t test their firmware before they release it to customers and how long they sit on issues before they acknowledge them, not to mention their support drones on the phone who just read from a script and actually have no idea about networking and routing.
So I thought, here we go, a poll with taking, Would You Recommend DLink to Your Friends.
In-stat has released figures for market share for 4Q10 Wireless LAN (#1105009WL) for North America. I’ll quote the figures in just a bit, but firstly let me highlight to you all the most popular and stable routers on the market at the moment. The Netgear WNDR3700 / N600 and the Linksys/Cisco WRT610 of which are based on well established hardware that even have OpenWRT/DD-WRT firmware available due to their established and open hardware platforms.
Here is the table of results that some sites have published (I couldn’t find these values directly from In-Stat but sites who published them link back to In-stat as the source).
| 2009 Revenues (000s) | 2010 Revenues (000s) | |||
| Cisco | $902,116 | Cisco | $1,186,974 | |
| Technicolor | $469,542 | NETGEAR | $638,084 | |
| NETGEAR | $455,948 | Technicolor | $454,444 | |
| Linksys | $417,322 | D-Link | $419,717 | |
| D-Link | $410,377 | Linksys | $392,111 | |
| Pace | $351,527 | Pace | $360,453 | |
| Buffalo Tech. | $215,250 | TP-LINK | $291,038 | |
| Belkin | $192,891 | Aruba | $235,662 | |
| TP-LINK | $178,431 | Buffalo Tech. | $221,329 | |
| Aruba | $158,989 | ZyXEL | $209,454 | |
| 2009 Q4 Revenues (000s) | 2010 Q4 Revenues (000s) | |||
| Cisco | $251,196 | Cisco | $361,845 | |
| NETGEAR | $159,321 | NETGEAR | $199,062 | |
| Technicolor | $122,949 | Technicolor | $127,624 | |
| D-Link | $118,601 | D-Link | $112,872 | |
| Linksys | $93,387 | Linksys | $101,152 | |
| Pace | $83,839 | TP-LINK | $87,545 | |
| TP-LINK | $59,788 | Pace | $87,462 | |
| Buffalo Tech. | $58,269 | Aruba | $68,944 | |
| Belkin | $49,079 | Buffalo Tech. | $52,962 | |
| Aruba | $44,879 | Belkin | $50,353 | |
From the figures, the total market went up roughly 10% and notice how the market share for both Cisco and Netgear increased (3% and 2% respectively) while DLink shrunk by 1%. So if you are in the market for a new wireless device, you might want to consider which company appears to be growing in and which are shrinking. It isn’t all just marketing, at some point the quality of the products begin to factor in.
I got to thinking today, is the quality of their firmware affecting people’s decision to go with DLink products. Given that DLink is a public company, it must report it’s financials and so a quick google and hey presto here is the info.
If you go to http://www.corpasia.net/taiwan/2332/irwebsite/index.php?mod=financial you will see how they are doing.
Now, I started this blog around Aug of 2009 when they screwed up big time with their firmware on the N series routers. Everyone was up in arms and taking their routers back. Have a look at their figures (Note YoY= Year on Year ie this time last year totals for the year and MoM= Month on Month ie. compared to this month last year – figures are in US Million):
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They clearly took a massive hit because they just didn’t care about what they where dishing out to the customers and everyone knew about it. So people voted with their wallets and went else where for networking equipment.
In 2010, people seemed to have forgotten about what happened in 2009 and began choosing them again but with some hesitation as they returned to very similar figures as 2008.
I am sure 2009 figures caused quite a stir at DLink with management having to explain the figure to shareholders however it doesn’t seem to have really made them put a lot more effort into their products from my experiences with my own router.
Who knows, the may pull a rabbit out of their behind and show us some new firmware or better still, give us the ability to install OpenWRT on them, but hey this is DLink, who am I kidding here.
Yesterday, I noticed that one of the antennas on my router wasn’t connected properly and so twisted it to screw it in, it actually then popped out of the back of the router with the gold internal connector.
It appears that the SMA/Antenna connector that is soldered onto the board is made up of two parts, the base which is soldered onto the PCB and the thread which screws into the antenna. I tried to push it back in but it would appear that a large amount of force is required to do that.
At any rate, I have taken some photos of it, clearly I doesn’t look damaged and should be able to pop right back in (that is my inexperienced opinion mind you). I am thinking of opening it up and pushing it back in while re-enforcing the connector so as to not rip out of the PCB. If you know any better or know what I can do to fix this, please comment on this blog.
UPDATE: It is easily fixed, you just remove the rubber gromets from the base to expose the screws, open the box up and then use a clamp to pop it back in.
Hi All;
It appears that people are posting direct links to firmware on this sites dropbox account. Please spare a thought to this site when doing this as you are robbing this site of much needed traffic.
There are posts on DLinks and other forums linking directly to the dlinkedrouter firmwares. The only way to get attention to the firmware issues and make DLink get off their behinds and do something, is by being heard and in this site’s case, traffic. Directly linking to firmware means that I get no traffic. This is a standard WordPress blog hosted by WordPress and so I make no money off this, I do this purely to fight for the DLink consumers against DLink’s bad quality.
Please think twice before linking directly, or if you must, then please think about attributing the link with the sites URL.
Thanks in advance.
DlinkedRouter
I recently helped a person who had a new DIR-655 and really wasn’t an IT person and therefore only had a working knowledge of Networking.
He was having troubles getting his 655 to connect via PPPoE and it turns out he had made an assumption about how routers work that wasn’t true but was an easy enough assumption to make if you didn’t exactly understand how routers work with PPPoE.
What really irks me about that situation was that DLink demanded money to support him. There is something fundamentally wrong with how DLink support customers here. They sell a highly technical device to the average home user who is typically non-technical. Therefore it is completely expected that some users will struggle setting them up.
DLink unreasonably expect that the lame manuals will be enough for any average person to follow and that if it isn’t, they will demand money from them to explain it to them so that it will be configured properly. They are making money off customers buying their products and again explaining to customers how to use their products.
I think that just stinks of greed. Some users just don’t get IT naturally and need to be coached. Their products are aimed for the home, THEY WILL GET NON IT PEOPLE BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS and so they should offer their support free of charge.
Basically, if you are an average home user, DON’T BUY DLINK as routers do need some level IT skills to configure and if you do not have them, DLink will demand money from you to help you with their routers.
Best off looking for a company that is prepared to support IT illiterate consumers free of charge. If you are aware of one, post a comment.
I recently posted the comment below in response to a DIR-855 owner who was returning their router.
Move off DLink, their quality is no better than the no name routers that come out of China but charge as if they are high end routers. Further more, they are not committed to fixing the issues.
I’d really like to know how many people actually agree with that statement to determine if it is a common sentiment among DLink owners. Hence, the poll below:
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