Fremont, California-headquartered Grand Junction Networks Inc has introduced what it claims are the industry’s first commercially available 100Base-T fibre – 100Base-FX – products, and a new workgroup switch. The 12-port FastHub 100, a 100Base-T fibre repeater, is fully compatible with the draft IEEE 802.3 standard for 100Base-T repeaters and complies with the 100Base-FX physical media specification, says the company. Grand Junction says the offering is aimed at centralised server and high-speed backbone applications for switch-based networks. The FastNIC 100Base-T half-duplex EISA network adaptor board is also fully 100Base-T compatible, says Grand Junction, and features a 32-bit bus master data transfer mode, said to minimise the load on the host processor. Also to be available is a full-duplex Fast Ethernet operation, offering throughput of up to 200Mbps. The FastSwitch 10/100 ES workgroup switch provides two expansion slots for high-speed server and backbone communications, and 25 10Mbps private Ethernet ports for workstations, says Grand Junction. It also includes two field-upgradable expansion slots for the company’s 100Mbps FastMate modules. The first four of these comprise a one switched-port model for unshielded twisted pair; the same for fibre; an eight-port 100Base-TX repeater module for Fast Ethernet on unshielded twisted pair; and a four-port repeater module for Fast Ethernet on fibre. A field-installable module for communications to Fibre Distributed Data Interface backbones is due in the third quarter and a module for Asynchronous Transfer Mode backbone communications is planned for release sometime in 1996, says the company. The FastHub 100 fibre repeater will list for $8,000 and ship this month. The half-duplex FastNIC 100 EISA fibre adaptor will list for $1,200, with the full-duplex version coming in at $1,245. Both are also shipping this month. The FastSwitch 10/100 ES lists for $8,0005 and is available now. The FastMate modules will all be shipping this month, with prices starting at $500.
