D-Link to adopt TI WLAN silicon

By Duffy Hayes
from CED Broadband Direct, May 14, 2002

One of the real retail surprises to surface over the past year or so has been the market for simple consumer Ethernet networking products. More and more consumers are becoming comfortable setting up basic wireless LANs to split their single broadband connection, and one of the early market leaders at retail has been D-Link.

Under a new agreement with chipmaker Texas Instruments, future iterations of D-Link 802.11b routing gear will have improved speed and performance through the incorporation of TI's ACX100 chipset technology. D-Link will integrate the TI 802.11 chipset into upcoming wireless products for the D-LinkAir series of IEEE 802.11b wireless gear.

While TI's ACX100 chipset works on the 802.11b platform, in the relatively noisy 2.4 GHz frequency, TI has proven that the ACX100 can achieve higher-data rates and wider coverage areas when connected to other TI-based networking products. Both sides are hopeful that TI-enabled D-Link routing gear can improve throughput at least 30 percent at 11 Mbps, at even greater distances than currently realized.