Why does nobody buy D-Link anymore?

[Ichinisan]

I talk to a dozen people a day about their routers. It doesn't seem like people are buying D-Link routers any more. I only encounter older ones.

D-Link used to be fairly popular, but now I rarely encounter them. I actually see more Apple routers than D-Link these days. What's up with that? Was D-Link acquired and merged with another brand or something?

 

[PliotronX]

They used to fit into a great niche and were also offering advancements ahead of others (aside from Belkin). I also love, love, love their recovery mode. It's almost impossible to brick a D-link beyond repair whereas I had to purchase a USB serial JTAG w/3.3v option for my Tp-Link after a bad DD-WRT build in January.

 

[JimKiler]

people bought D-Link? Ever since Asus starting selling routers i have been getting them. But The Wire Cutter really likes TP-Link routers and they are cheaper than Asus.

 

[JackMDS]

I always why people got it in the past too.

I had number of their products years ago (the ones that were "offering advancements ahead of others"), They all got trashed away after short period of time. No point to "Advancement" when performance is bellow mediocre .

Currently, for the price only their sub $50 IP indoor cameras are a good buy.

 

[nerp]

I had bad experiences with D-Link stuff in the early 2000s. Left a bad taste in my mouth ever since.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I have nothing against DLink, got a 5 port switch installed at a buddies house that's rockin.

 

[John Connor]

D-Link? What's that? I bought a WRT54GL, flashed it to DD-WRT and still use it!

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't know that D-Link was anything special. It used to see bigger retail distribution back in the day, which is why they sold.

Nowadays, not so much.

 

[linkgoron]

I actually bought a DIR-880l last year. It has been working flawlessly for more than a year. Much better than the TP-link it replaced. I also bought a dwa-192 recently, but that's something else.

Generally, though, for consumers it looks like people usually go for TP-Link for cheaper parts or Asus/Linksys (and sometimes Netgear) for higher-end parts.

 

[Red Squirrel]

As far as SOHO routers/switches go never had an issue with D-link myself, or not even Linksys. But at that price point you can't expect much. Now days for me it's Pfsense + managed switch though. I love that setup as it's so versatile. As far as actual throughput, I find even with a cheap SOHO D-link I was getting close to the saturation point of gigabit. Only reason I went with a managed switch was because I wanted to do vlans.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I know that I've always tends towards routers that allow usage with third-party firmware, and D-Link has never had a high rating in that regard.

Edit: I bought a DIR-615 rev. C1 in a retail store once, while I was on vaca, just so I could set up DD-WRT to borrow someone's internet (with permission). They were helpful to me that way. Other than that, I don't think that I've ever bought D-Link, although I did have someone give me one once.

 

[Ichinisan]

My only D-Link router was an old DI-524 (not sure which HW rev) wireless-G router. It was rock-solid. I never had to reboot it even once unless I had been changing settings. The only problem was, it would block/break NTP for all devices on LAN. Windows couldn't synchronize time. PS3 couldn't. Nothing could.

There was no firmware update to fix it and I could find no help with settings to work around it, so the router ultimately had to go.

While I had it, I also had a D-Link 5-port switch in a very similar chassis. One of them included little rubber feet that actually let you stick the router and switch to each other. That was a pretty cool design feature. Comparable to the stackable Linksys stuff at the time.