Who’s First? D-Link, Netgear and Linksys

The one-upmanship of who’s first never ends in an industry built on standards meant to make everyone just a little more homogenized (and thus interoperable). That’s why D-Link made an early claim last Friday of being first to have its products Wi-Fi Certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance for supporting 802.11n Draft 2.0. Netgear followed close behind with its own announcement.

But over the weekend, D-Link reworded its announcement from saying it was “first” to simply saying it had passed.

Som Pal Choudhury, product line manager for Netgear’s advanced wireless division, told Wi-Fi Planet that the letters from the Alliance to vendors with certified product from the first round of testing went out on Thursday the 28th at 8pm, and added, “I believe Wi-Fi Alliance filed a strong complaint against D-Link for self-proclaiming first.”

Choudhury said Netgear’s, D-Link’s and Linksys’ products were all certified at the same time.

Linksys has not bothered to put out a press release about its products getting certified yet. That probably comes with the comfort of being number one in sales in the Wi-Fi industry.

According to the Wi-Fi Allaince’s list of Certified products, the Linksys Wireless-N Home Router (model WRT150N) is the product in question.

Also certified in the first batch of testing was Metalink’s WLANPlus chipset (tested in an access point reference design) for 802.11n Draft 2.0. The chips are targeted at vendors making products for voice, gaming and high-definition video transfer over Wi-Fi.