Date: 05 Aug 96 10:10:22 EDT From: Jan Knepper <100626.3506@CompuServe.COM> To: "[FreeBSD Hackers]" <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: 100BASE-TX hubs Message-ID: <960805141021_100626.3506_BHL87-1@CompuServe.COM>
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/* I was thinking of building a small 100BASE-TX network at home to try and stress-test our NFS code and also investigate its performance... */ <grin> An otherone that goes for the *real* stuff... /* It seems to me that I need a hub of some kind but I can't find any reasonably priced 100BASE-TX products at all. */ I am afraid there aren't. The expensive thing in 100 Mb is still the HUB. I use an HP 100VG HUB here. I think it costed like USD 2000 or something like that. It has 15 ports though. The Ethernet cards are not as expensive. I mean the difference between a 3Com 10 Mb (PCI) and HP 100VG 100 Mb (PCI) is not that bad. I remember when I was looking for the 100 Mbps stuff I also looked at Intel stuff. at that time they had an offer with 4 Ethernet adapters 100 Mb and a HUB with 4 ports for a reasonable price. However extending that stuff was almost impossible. Also: Don't forget that if you go with a certain brand you better buy everything of that brand. I for instance refuse to use HP with Intel or 3Com. Regarding the words of the Intel people these 100 Mb things are going to be different for some time. It is not as standardized as 10 Mb is at this moment. I for instance tried to use the Ethernet_802.12 frame for NetWare instead of 802.2 or 802.3 since 802.12 seems to be the standard voor 100 Mb, but no go there yet so far... /* Alternatively, can I avoid a hub altogether? */ Nop! For 100 Mb you NEED a HUB. /* I vaguely remember something about a wire-swapped cable which could connect two systems together. */ Well, there are different wire's for different tasks... /* How would I go about buying/making such a cable? */ BUY you cables for 100 Mb, selfmade often does not work because of quality aspects. /* On the other hand, maybe I will just scrounge some old 10Mbps equipment */ <nag> you will LOVE 100 Mb!!! On my daily work, developing C++ under NT I run everything over the 100 Mb to the Novell NetWare file server. Compilers/Sources/Libs. This way I can access the stuff from more than one workstation at the same time. The performance is incredible and there is not that much loss compared to local SCSI-2 disk in the development machine. Have fun! Jan Knepper
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