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The LAN interconnect industry has substantially grown over the past few years. During that time, it has improved product performance, kept up with new technology, participated in developing standards, and introduced more features and functionality. In addition, competitive pressures over the past year have led to 10% to 20% price cuts on many products.
LAN interconnect products support Ethernet, token-ring, and FDDI networks. Most are available as stand-alone units, although hub-based units and PC boards with software for installing in a LAN-based PC are also available. Interconnect products designed as plug-in cards for LAN hubs are typically provided by hub vendors such as Cabletron Systems, Chipcom, Synoptics Communications, and Ungermann-Bass. Newport Systems Solutions and Niwot Networks offer PC boards and software bridges and routers for LAN-based servers.
Multiport bridges and routers, available from many vendors, address the corporate site where individual departmental LANs link to a backbone LAN and to remote locations. These devices eliminate the need and cost of several individual bridges or routers, and also eliminate multiple hops and related reduced performance. Kalpana offers a multiport bridge that employs packet switching among LAN ports.
Most routers now support multiple protocols, and route packets across interconnected LANs operating under different network protocols, such as IF, IPX, and S. Many now also pass IBM SDLC packets through encapsulation, which lets users access IBM hosts.
Routers have evolved into bridging routers, which give users the benefits of bridging LANs and routing packets. Most router vendors, such as Cisco Systems, now offer bridging routers. Cisco's bridging routers support NOS and WAN protocols and provide users with extensive application flexibility.
Bridge/router vendors are improving product performance to handle increased internetwork traffic and alleviate reduced response times. Vendors are also extending product features and functions to accommodate more extensive user applications. Many products are scalable, enabling users to expand the capacity of a device by inserting additional LAN and WAN boards.
Advanced Computer Communications has introduced Express Queuing, which optimize response times across WAN links and thereby reduces traffic congestion. Available...