Hewlett-Packard Co has announced details of its first products conforming to the proposed 100VG-AnyLAN standard for 100Mbps local networks, which include a new 15-port hub, and interface boards. The products are due to ship in August, and are to form part of the company’s AdvanceStack series. Hewlett-Packard says that the new AnyLAN products support categories 3 and 4 unshielded twisted pair cable at distances up to 300 feet, and category 5 up to 600 feet from the end node to the hub. The new AdvanceSTack 100VG Hub15 supports three levels of cascading, while Hewlett-Packard has also implemented a two-level priority system for time-sensitive applications which require guaranteed bandwidth. The hub is said to incorporate built-in Windows-based network management for configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting, while an SNMP management module is also to be available, which the company says also provides bridging to connect AnyLAN networks to 10Mbps Ethernet networks. Hewlett-Packard also announced new 10Mbps/100Mbps selectable AT and EISA local network adaptors, each of which is said to incorporate two RJ-45 connectors, one for each speed; autosensing is said to automatically determine the correct mode of operation. Network operating system support includes NetWare, Windows NT and Windows for Workgroups. Full NDIS Network Driver Interface Specification support is also claimed. Peripheral Component Interconnect versions of the boards are expected by the end of the year. There is no word yet on pricing. Finally, Hewlett-Packard also announced a new router – said to support Ethernet, Token Ring, wide area networks, FDDI and AnyLAN. The new Router 650 is said to provide routing protocol support for TCP/IP, IPX, DECnet and XNS, while Spanning Tree is supported for bridging. Wide-area networking environments supported include Frame Relay, X25, leased-line, dial-up, Switched Multi-Megabit Data Service and ISDN. The company says that the product has a chassis which can accomodate up to four interface boards supporting different protocols and interface combinations; each of these uses an Intel 80960 RISC processor to offload tasks from the central processor. It has 8Mb of memory as standard – upgradable to 16Mb – and is also said to incorporate PCMCIA Flash memory for storing operating system software. Pricing for it has yet to be finalised, but Hewlett-Packard says that the product will have an entry price of less than UKP10,000.
Content from our partners
