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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (168697)	2/7/2002 5:50:26 AM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 176387

Dell expands business LAN offerings By Stephen Lawson February 6, 2002 1:46 pm PT DELL ON WEDNESDAY expanded its line of network equipment for small and medium-size businesses, rolling out a Gigabit Ethernet and a Fast Ethernet switch for U.S. customers. Dell began selling network equipment for small and medium-size businesses last September after seeing those products start to become a standardized commodity suited to Dell's direct-sales model, said Kim Crawford, vice president and general manager of Dell's networking business, in a conference call Wednesday. At that time, it introduced the PowerConnect line, consisting of two switches with management features and two without. Managed switches include support for functions such as optimizing the traffic flow in a network. The switches unveiled Wednesday expand the options in that line to include an unmanaged all-Gigabit Ethernet switch for the core of company networks and an unmanaged high-speed workgroup switch. Both are available immediately in the U.S. and will be available in the future in other countries. The Dell PowerConnect 2508 is an 8-port Gigabit Ethernet switch, priced at $499, that can be used for linking servers and workstations as well as PCs. It is designed to help small and medium-size businesses link together several workgroups and servers at high speed, Crawford said. The Dell PowerConnect 2124, also introduced Wednesday, has 24 100M bps (bit per second) Fast Ethernet ports and one Gigabit Ethernet uplink port. It can be used as a high-speed interconnect for workstations and printers as well as PCs, according to Dell. The PowerConnect 2124 is priced at $299. For example, a company with about 100 employees might use a PowerConnect 2124 in each of five workgroups to give each user Fast Ethernet access to the network, and use the PowerConnect 2508 to aggregate the traffic from each of those workgroups as well as provide a Gigabit Ethernet connection to each of three servers, Crawford said. Ethernet switching, which gives each client a link to the LAN at a set speed, began as a relatively expensive technology used mostly in medium-size and large enterprises. With advances in silicon and other technology, customers gradually have been able to buy more speed and capabilities for less money. Austin, Texas-based Dell designed the switches jointly with Delta Networks, in Taoyuan, Taiwan, which manufactures them.