Belkin

Belkin International, Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Computer hardware
Founded	1983
Headquarters	Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California
Key people	Chet Pipkin, Chairman, Founder
Products	Computer hardware
Employees	1000+[1]
Website	www.belkin.com

Belkin International, Inc., is a Californian manufacturer of computer hardware that specializes in connectivity devices, headquartered in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California.^[2] Belkin sells in both the consumer and the commercial market, with various product lines including routers, iPod and iPhone accessories, mobile computing accessories, surge protectors, switches, hubs (USB and computer network), cables, KVM switches, racks and enclosures, and other peripherals.

History

The company was founded in 1983 in Hawthorne, California, by Co-Founder and Chairman Chet Pipkin. Co-Founders Dwayne and Steve Bellows are no longer affiliated with the company

The company

It has twice made the Inc. magazine's list of 500 fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. Belkin, previously headquartered in Compton, California, moved 18 miles (29 km) to new state of the art corporate headquarters in Playa Vista in February 2010.^[3] Belkin also has major offices across the globe, such as in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Brazil, China, India, France and Australia.^[4]

Product range

• Networking: routers
• iPhone, iPad, and iPod accessories: cases, FM transmitters, chargers
• Energy-saving accessories for the home
• Notebook and netbook accessories: cases, cushions, cooling pads, power adapters
• Data center accessories: racks and enclosures, KVM switches
• Surge protectors
• USB hubs and other connectivity peripherals, like the Easy Transfer Cable
• Copper and Fiber Optic Cables

Criticism

In 2003, Belkin released a home use wireless router which would occasionally replace users' HTTP requests with an advertisement for Belkin's filtering software. Belkin received some intense criticism for this from technically literate customers and others who described it as a man-in-the-middle attack or a form of session hijacking. Belkin initially treated this as a public relations problem rather than a highly inappropriate action on their part, but later relented and issued a firmware update deleting this functionality from the product.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

In early 2009, a Belkin 'online sales representative' was discovered paying Amazon.com, Newegg and Buy.com users to manipulate reviews of a notoriously buggy Belkin router. Belkin's President, Mark Reynoso, responded to criticism, saying that the company does not engage in unethical practices, noting however that 'one of our employees' may have been responsible.^[10][11][12] On January 19, 2009, gizmodo.com published a letter from an anonymous Belkin worker, where the employee claims that for years all workers were pressed upon to "do whatever is needed to get good product reviews and good press", which included "sending blog writers a device with custom firmware that hides known bugs", "faking hardware logo certifications", as well as "writing poor reviews of competitors products".^[13][14][15]

References

1. ^ "About Belkin". http://www.belkin.com/aboutus/. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
2. ^ "Contact Us." Belkin. Retrieved on July 9, 2010.
3. ^ Office Deals in Playa Vista Demonstrate Strength of L.A.’s Westside, CoStar Group Blog, July 2, 2008 .
4. ^ "belkin Country List". belkin. http://world.belkin.com/?r=y. Retrieved 13 April 2011. 
5. ^ "Help! my Belkin router is spamming me". The Register. 7 November 2003. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_router/. Retrieved 2005-08-02. 
6. ^ "Belkin Routers Route Users to Censorware Ad". Slashdot. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/07/1740205. Retrieved 2005-08-02. 
7. ^ "CastleCops – Web hijack riles Belkin router users". http://castlecops.com/a4056-Web_hijack_riles_Belkin_router_users.html.  080205 castlecops.com
8. ^ "Web hijack riles Belkin router users". http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html.  080205 news.com.com
9. ^ "Web hijacking by router – a new method of advertisement by Belkin". http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/2003-11/msg00228.html.  080205 merit.edu
10. ^ "Belkin Amazon Rep Paying For Fake Online Reviews". http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/17/166226.  090117 slashdot.org
11. ^ "Exclusive: Belkin’s Development Rep is Hiring People to Write Fake Positive Amazon Reviews". http://www.thedailybackground.com/2009/01/16/exclusive-belkins-development-rep-is-hiring-people-to-write-fake-positive-amazon-reviews/.  090117 thedailybackground.com
12. ^ http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/18/belkin-replies-to-mechanical-turk-shilling/ Crunchgear: Belkin replies to Mechanical Turk shilling. Retrieved on 18 Jan 2009.
13. ^ Chen, Jason (19 June 2009). "Belkin Employee Sheds Light On Belkin's Supposedly Dirty Practices". http://i.gizmodo.com/5134652/belkin-employee-sheds-light-on-belkins-supposedly-dirty-practices. Retrieved 13 April 2011. 
14. ^ Berndtson, Chad (20 January 2009). "For Belkin, Are Fake Reviews For Real?". CRN Magazine. http://www.crn.com/blogs-op-ed/the-channel-wire/212901367/for-belkin-are-fake-reviews-for-real.htm. Retrieved 13 April 2011. 
15. ^ Weintraub, Seth (19 January 2009). "Belkin's response to the 'pay for good review' scandal is bad news". http://blogs.computerworld.com/belkins_response_to_the_pay_for_good_review_scandal_is_bad_news. Retrieved 13 April 2011. 

External links

	Greater Los Angeles portal
	Companies portal
	Computing portal

• Belkin (US)
• Belkin (UK)
• Belkin (ANZ)
• Belkin DSL Modem resources