Dowty Communications Ltd is having a stab at the high-end hub market. At the heart of the ScanNet System Center is a 30 MIPS Cobra RISC processor that drives multiple backplanes with a total throughput of more than 1G-bits per second. Dowty’s box uses three separate Ethernet buses, a single Token Ring bus, two for Fibre Digital Data Interface, a control and management bus and a high-speed intermodule bus. Dowty’s strengths remain with Ethernet, which will be supported immediately, and Token Ring boards will appear later this year. The beast comes in two sizes – a five-slot chassis that is #1,500, or a 17-slot version at #3,500. FDDI bridge modules add #11,000 to the cost, Ethernet hub modules cost #4,000 to #5,000.
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