D-Link of Irvine, CA, the number three company in revenue market share for home and SOHO wireless LAN products (according to Synergy Research Group’s 2002 report), is hoping to get a jump on the multimode competition, at least by a few weeks.
The company has announced this week that it is shipping its first 802.11a/b/g capable router, the DI-864 Wireless Router w/4-Port Switch, for sharing a cable or DSL modem connection between multiple computers. The company is also shipping dual-band CardBus and PCI adapters.
This advanced shipping gives D-Link a slight edge over Linksys this month — earlier this week Linksys announced shipment of a CardBus NIC supporting 802.11a/b/g. It expects to have a multimode router and access point available by the end of the month.
Linksys rates number one in Synergy Research’s list of SOHO market revenue for 2002, with over 20% of the market. Number four, Netgear, is also shipping a CardBus adapter for 802.11a/b/g.
The D-Link line of multi-mode products will also eventually include an access point. All the products will support the current draft of 802.11g, as the standard won’t be ratified by the IEEE until this summer. Pricing on D-Link’s new products was not available.