Ungermann-Bass Inc is finally trading in on parent company Tandem Computers Inc’s fault tolerant technology to develop secure local area networks. The move comes as Ungermann-Bass is looking for ways to expand its local area network reseller channel by building relationships with network integrators. At present 10% of US product sales come from resellers, whereas Ungermann would like it to be nearer 40% as in Europe. Integrators are crying out for commercially viable fault tolerant networks, so the company is currently developing one using two adaptor cards for connecting PCs, two physical backbones and two physical connections, reports Computer Systems News. Ungermann-Bass is also exploring the possibilities of Fibre Distributed Data Interface technology over twisted pair for fault tolerance. FDDI is seen as a technology ripe for exploitation in this area as it uses a dual-ring configuration.
