Have I mentioned here before how much I absolutely detest dlink and all of
their crap products? I know I've said it before but I reckon I've sold 30
dlink products and *easily* 15 of them have died. I had a pile of dead dlink
crap at one point. I've still got a $200 dlink gigabit router and a dlink
wireless box. Both are in perfect working order (for a dlink that appears to
be daily problems) but I am going to throw them straight in the bin and buy
some products that aren't crap. I might hit them with an axe or jump on them
first so at least I get rid of some of my frustration with them.

Anyway, my question is do dlink re-brand themselves or make stuff for other
manufacturers or sell parts to other manufacturers? I really don't want to
buy brand xyz and find out it's really just a dlink piece-o-crap. Even if
dlink make so much as a screw that goes into another brand I want to avoid
them.

Thanks in advance,
Michael

On Mon, 12 May 2008 23:23:20 +1000, "Michael C"
<mike@nospam.com> wrote:

If you were having problems why did you keep buying the same
brand until now? Why not return the faulty product while
still in warranty or did they all crap out later?

I can't say I'm a fan of their gear but do have a few items
with mixed results - An old router which worked flawlessly
but had to be replaced due to 10Mb WAN port bottleneck, an
802.11b wifi router which was never used for much routing
(rather as an access point as it was a fraction of the cost
of an access point at the time due to a rebate, and it
worked fine as an access point though the requirements of
location for it meant it's range was low), a PCI 802.11b
card that worked fine, and a USB 802.11g network adapter
that has poor range and a buggy driver... though just
yesterday or the day prior I found that bug and through some
research tracked down a couple newer drivers than on their
US web/FTP site. Overall the Dlink gear I have is all older
models that seem to have been a fair value at the time as
they were purchased when offered with a large rebate.

There are lots of networking products that have minor issues
in the low end consumer gear. With network cards the
problem tends to be drivers and DLink's ability to produce
and get newer drivers distributed to their various FTP
servers and webpages updated is terrible.

As for switches and routers, some people use them (Dlink)
with no problems so I would wonder what is different about
the scenarios in which they failed. Were many of the
problem units the same or very similar model which might be
bad and the rest a more typical problem rate compared to
other brands?

Have you opened them and checked for excessive heat and/or
failed capacitors? Have you tried using a different power
supply if the one used isn't integral? Different firmware
for the router?

It is easy to blame a brand but much of their gear isn't so
different from anyone else's. Finding root cause is better
than not, helping to avoid similar problems in other branded
gear.

I'm not aware of any other brand they make stuff for or sell
parts to. Other most popular brands look (both casing and
PCB) different enough that they appear to be separate
productions although some may use the same chipsets or base
firmware as some other product brand and model.

You may have similar problems with many lesser brands, it is
always best to research a specific brand and model before
purchase instead of the idea of buying everything from one
company, though if you insisted on going with only one I
would suggest 3Com or for lower price Linksys is popular.
Network gear is everywhere these days so don't be surprised
if you find plenty of people with Linksys gear that has
problems, but being a popular brand you would need consider
that the rate of problems may not be especially high and
again consider the root cause and whether your needs are
going to make that cause a problem.

If you're talking about things like ethernet PCI cards as
well, those are a dime a dozen and many practically
identical from several brands.

A better question is what changed inbetween the time the
product was new and later, since we should assume you would
return the gear for refund if it didn't work right when new.
With any gear you will need test it's functionality in the
intended use, then focus on the same things as with many
other computer gear, good power (site AC in the case of much
network gear), checking heat levels.

Personally I find it better to put a heatsink on network
processing chips if I find they run hot, and drill a few
(addt'l) vent holes in the product casing to promote longer
lifespan. The other alternative is selecting a product with
a fan in it though these days such products tend to be rarer
and rarer, mostly reserved for enterprise class gear, and
rightly so in some cases since small higher RPM fans tend to
make noise many home users find objectionable.

You might also check the customer product reviews at places
like Newegg.com, Amazon.com, particularly focusing on
problem reports and rates rather than reports everything is
ok though in some cases especially networking and router
configurations it can tend to be that the user simply didn't
know how to set up networking themselves... these days
anyone who clicks a mouse in windows feels able to tackle
more than this and sometimes without a good result or
willingness to do a bit of research and learning along the
way about basic networking configuration.

"kony" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:gtog245b77b7nufjp5n2ogbfl1fpsbbcbq@4ax.com...
It takes a while to realise there is a pattern happening. PC products have a
reasonable number of failures and at first it can just seem like bad luck.
The supplier I used during that period only sold DLink so it was extra
effort to purchase something else. Their products appear to be pretty good
when they work. It's a pity they are so unreliable really.

I think their older products might be ok. From what I can tell there was a
point in time when they decided that buying the cheapest of cheap crap
components was a way to make a greater profit.

Generally I've found their network cards to be ok.

I think people who purchase 1 or 2 dlink products won't notice the problems.
If it works then it works but if it fails then it might look like a one off
failure. They have no way to realise it is part of a pattern of failures.

I haven't opened anything to see what the problem is but it is anything that
uses an external power supply. It's not just the power supplies dying as
I've had both the power supply and the box die in different cases. At one
point I had quite a collection of dead dlink stuff and would match up
working power supplies with working boxes.

Yes it is, it fails *much* more often than any other product I've used,
period. The only thing I've ever used in my entire life that was less
reliable was my first car but it was over 30 years old.

That's probably not going to be a problem.

Linksys sounds good. I purchased 1 linksys router and it appeared to be
pretty good. I'll probably get one for home.

PCI cards I've never had a problem with but I'll probably avoid dlink just
because I detest them so much. Generally it's all onboard anyway.

The gear tends to last the warranty period and then expire some time later.
Generally the only thing that happens inside warranty is the flash losing
its settings.

Thanks.

Michael

PS, due to my dlink router's crapiness I had a lot of trouble sending this
message.

"MikeC" <mikec@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:48290327$0$13946$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.a u...
Actually I take that back. It turns out their network cards are crap also.
It appears the problem was actually the dlink network card. There must have
been multiple problems because I replaced the dlink router and wireless box
with a linksys wireless router and the problem persisted. It wasn't until I
replaced the network card also that the problem went away. I should have
known not to assume something from dlink was working. So it looks like the
dlink router was no good (even with the onboard network it was failing), the
dlink wireless box was not working (I was lucky to have it last a month
without the need for a hard reset) and the dlink network card wasn't working
(plugging the network into the onboard nic with the linksys solved the
problem). The only question that remains is why did I not assume that ALL
the dlink crap was crap. Even I am constantly suprised at how crap their
crap is and I thought it was impossible for me to be suprised by them any
longer.

Michael

On Tue, 13 May 2008 12:55:26 +1000, "MikeC"
<mikec@nospam.com> wrote:



Until you know where the problem lies it could be a problem.
Suppose chipset spec appears to suggest it doesn't need a
heatsink, so both DLink and another product using that chip
don't put a 'sink on it. Suppose the firmware is flawed and
two different products use it, only having a different GUI
to make them seem distinct.

PSU failings are even harder to isolate as you aren't
necessarily assured a manufacturer will even keep using the
same brand across multiplie revisions or models, and many
use common PSU brands - almost nobody designs their own when
it's external including DLink, so you have similar chances
of PSU failure with many other models.


Take the cover off and see if it runs better with more
airflow, though if any warranty remains that may end it but
I seldom if ever see tamper detection stickers on consumer
network gear.

The other option is to just buy cheap and if it doesn't work
out, toss it not having lost much money as it can cost
little more to toss than ship off for warranty replacement.
Here's one for $5 after a rebate with fairly good reviews
though it may need the firmware updated to work well (at
least one reviewer mentioned this). At that price stock up,
have a couple replacements on the shelf so you're never
stuck using one once it's starting dying.

On Tue, 13 May 2008 23:34:34 -0400, kony <spam@spam.com>
wrote:


Oops, forgot to post the link,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833156038