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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jim bender who wrote (14370)	3/9/1998 7:04:00 PM
From: Mang Cheng	Respond to of 45548

"3Com Will Roll Out Three Network Interface Cards" (03/09/98; 4:04 p.m. EST) By Jeff Caruso, InternetWeek Servers have special needs that require special network interface cards -- at least that's the argument 3Com will present next week as it rolls out a series of three new NICs. The first fruits of 3Com's year-old server networking division include cards for Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and encapsulating token ring in Fast Ethernet. They reduce central processing unit utilization, monitor the integrity of the link, and automatically switch to a second connection if the first fails. These capabilities resonated with some users. "High availability for the server is the key," said Niraj Patel, chief technology officer at GMAC Commercial Mortgage, which has about 25 servers for imaging and Web applications. "Whatever it takes, we would spend the extra bucks to get that." Users would pay a premium for the server-specific NICs. The Fast Ethernet version, for instance, costs $199, more than twice as much as other Fast Ethernet cards from 3Com, in Santa Clara, Calif. The Gigabit Ethernet NIC costs $1,695, and the NIC for encapsulating token ring costs $249. The idea of cramming more capabilities into the NIC runs counter to the message from 3Com rival Intel, said Virginia Brooks, director of network research at the Aberdeen Group. Intel has been saying NICs should be simple and inexpensive. "3Com has gone a couple steps further than Intel. The ideal is probably somewhere inbetween," Brooks said. She said Intel has also been adding capabilities to its cards, such as the ability to respond to a remote command and activate the PC in which it resides. The token ring-in-Fast Ethernet NIC is the first card from 3Com specifically designed to support the encapsulation technology, though the vendor introduced the concept more than a year ago. The technology is intended for users who have a large investment in token ring NICs, but also plan to migrate to Fast Ethernet in the network backbone. The token ring clients need to connect to a 3Com token ring switch that encapsulates the token ring frame from the client inside a Fast Ethernet frame. The new NIC can strip off the Fast Ethernet shell to get to the original frame. Brooks was skeptical about user acceptance of the nonstandard technology, especially since token ring users pressed for bandwidth are more likely to wait for high-speed token ring, due out later this year. All the new server NICs can also provide multiple virtual LAN (VLAN) connections through one card, to give better security or better performance to a group of clients, said Diane Schmidt, product line manager at 3Com. The VLAN capabilities use proprietary tags, but 3Com will offer a software upgrade for the NICs to standard Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.1Q VLAN tags by the fall, Schmidt said. techweb.com Mang