D-Link Devices Implicated In Data Deluge

April 14th, 2006: Dane damns D-Link devices. Claims switches, routers and wireless access points are flooding online time-keeping servers.

The online time-keeping protocol used by servers to log and timestamp millions of transactions each day could be in danger of toppling over due to large amounts of data flooding them, according to a Danish administrator.

Poul-Henning Kamp - who runs a free Network Time Protocol (NTP) service in Denmark has written an open letter to D-Link in which he claims that, "A number of D-Link products, so far I have at least identified DI-604, DI-614+, DI-624, DI-754, DI-764, DI-774, DI-784, VDI604 and VDI624, contain a list of NTP servers in their firmware and using some sort of algorithm, they pick one and send packets to it.

This is about as wrong a way to do things as one can imagine. There is no way D-Link can change the list once the product is shipped, unless D-Link can persuade the customer to upgrade the firmware."

He claims - and has been doing so since November 2005 - that although, "I have no idea how many devices D-Link has sold, but between 75% and 90% of the packets which arrive at my server come from D-Link products."

Obviously as the D-Link devices come with a list of such servers, the problem, if found to be true, could lead to more time accuracy issues globally. At the time of going to press with this article D-Link has yet to make public comment.

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