Network Equipment Technologies of Redwood City, California last month introduced a networking multiplexer, which is claimed to offer more economical asynchronous connections to large corporate, private utility networks. Designated the NET MUX/260, the new product is a four-trunk statistical multiplexer, which connects up to 32 asynchronous devices such as terminals, personal computers, printers or host computers in an integrated digital network exchange-managed, IDNX, wide area backbone network. The IDNX is a family of transmission management products from NET which enables large corporations to build and manage private, wide-area backbone networks for general purpose transmission of speech, data and video signals. The multitrunks allow multipoint connections with or without redundant links, making the network’s topology more flexible. The new MUX/260 offers local and remote switching for connection to a resource channel anywhere in the network for single-vendor support for private wide area networks, according to Lloyd Collins, director of product marketing. The MUX/260 reduces the cost-per-port in an IDNX network by enabling clusters of low-speed asynchronous devices to connect to a single data port. Network management is simplified because the IDNX and NET MUX/260 products can both be configured and controlled from a single network management console.
