Ottawa, Canada-headquartered Plaintree Systems Inc has announced a new addition to its range of Fast Ethernet switches, in the shape of the WaveSwitch 4205. The new product comes with five 100Base-TX or 100Base-FX ports, as well as two optional TX/F X expansion slots. Each of the 100Mbps ports is said to support one Fast Ethernet segment of up to 2,048 nodes. Other features are said to include selective flow control; custom filtering capabilities and runt and cyclic redundancy check filtering. The WaveSwitch is due to ship this month priced at $5,000 for the TX version, and $7,000 for the FX model. Simultaneously, the company also introduced an eight-port 100Base-TX Fast Ethernet bridged repeater module, designed for installation in the high-speed slot of its existing WaveSwitch 1216 departmental switch, or the high-end 4800. The new TX P8 has eight 100Mbps ports, and an internal bridge ports and is designed to enable switched networks configured on the 1216 or 4800 connect seamlessly to Fast Ethernet backbones, servers or other Wave-Switches. It ships later this month for $2,500. Plaintree has also added its name to the list of members of the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance.
