D-Link

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D-Link Corporation is a Taiwanese company that manufactures wireless and Ethernet computer networking products for both consumer and SOHO users. The company was founded in 1986 by Ken Kao, Current CEO and Chairman. The corporate headquarters are located in Taipei, Taiwan. As of 2006, the company has offices in over 90 countries around the world. D-Link is the largest wireless LAN provider in Europe and China.

To focus on brand businesses, D-Link decided to spin off the company's OEM/ODM business to "Alpha Networks" in 2003. In 2004, 17% of Alpha Networks shares was sold to Quanta Computers. Focusing on network brand business, D-Link became the leading network brand in Taiwan.

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.

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

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