The main burden of IBM Corp’s networking announcements was launch of the Nways family of Asynchronous Transfer Mode products, initially comprising five wide area network switches, a wiring concentrator and software to link the 8260 Asynchronous Transfer Mode hub to the mainframe. The Nways Broadband Switch comes in five models – 200, 300, 500, 700 and 800 with the bottom two designed for use in customer premises. The Model 200 has throughput of 200Mbps and costs $20,000, the 300, with up to 2.1Gbps throughput, costing $40,000 to $400,000 depending on capacity. These ship later this year. Dreadfully late in the day, IBM is pitching the Nways Models 500, 700 and 800 at telephone companies: late because they don’t ship until mid to late next year, where many of the phone company battles for switch business are already lost and won, often by Newbridge Networks Corp or AT&T Corp. Capacities are 4.2Gbps, 25.6Gbps and 51.2Gbps and the 500 is priced the same as the 300, the 700 costs $300,000 to $1m, and the 800 was not yet priced. Interfaces include X25, HDLC, ISDN, High Speed Serial Interface, Frame Relay and continuous bit rate for speech and video. New LANlink software creates an interface between the 3172 terminal controller and the 8260 Asynchronous Transfer Mode hub, and there are two new Turboways Asynchronous Mode adaptors, the Turboways 25 at 25Mbps and Turboways 100, 100Mbps, with from eight to 12 ports and selling for from $4,000 to $6,000.
