  
|
| 
| |
Compare some of 3Com's, Cabletron's, and Cisco's oldest products with those the vendors offer today.
By Suzanne Gaspar
Network World, 03/26/01
To
see just how far network gear has come over the years, consider what
functionality your money would buy in 1986 and compare it to what
you'd get today.
Star topologies and wiring hubs arrived on the scene in the late 1980s, making networks affordable, more reliable and easier to administer. Thanks to 1990's IEEE 10Base-T standard for Ethernet over unshielded-twisted pair wiring, the price of hubs and network interface cards (NIC) dropped dramatically. A switched port that used to cost more than $2,500 costs less than $50 today, giving IT professionals more flexibility in designing their networks.
The explosion of Internet commerce and mobile access is driving demand for higher capacity and faster connections. Fortunately, widespread deployment of NICs, routers and switches brings higher speeds at lower costs, along with enhancements such as encryption, fault tolerance and load balancing.
Here's how the specifications and pricing of 15-year-old products 3Com, Cabletron/Enterasys and Cisco stack up to the vendors' current wares.
|
Cisco
|
| 1986 |
2001 |
|
|
|
| First
AGS Router |
Layer
3 Switch/Router 12016 |
| Throughput:
10M bit/sec |
Throughput:
80G bit/sec to 320G bit/sec |
| Processor:
300 packet/sec |
Processor:
Four million packet/sec |
| Features:
200 routing tables supported |
Features:
15 line card slots, full redundancy |
| Dimensions:
10 inches long by 17.5 inches wide by 20 inches high |
Dimensions:
22 inches long by 17.25 inches wide by 71.5 inches high |
| Price:
$5,550 |
Price:
$65,000 |
|
Cabletron/Enterasys
|
| 1988 |
2001 |
|
|
|
| First
MMAC-8 Chassis |
Layer
3 Expedition ER16 Switch |
| Throughput:
14,880 packet/sec (shared 10M bit/sec Ethernet |
Throughput:
70 million packet/sec |
| Features:
84 single-segment coax ports, IRM repeater and proprietary management
module, redundant power |
Features:
Traffic prioritization, security, application load balancing |
| Dimensions:
17.6 inches long by 17 inches wide by 14.5 inches high |
Dimensions:
19 inches long by 19 inches wide by 35 inches high |
| Price:
$210 per port |
Price:
$250 per switched Fast Ethernet port, $1,250 per Gigabit Ethernet
port |
|
3Com
|
| 1986 |
2001 |
|
|
|
| EtherLink
Network Interface Card |
Gigabit
Server Network Interface Card |
| Speed:
10M bit/sec |
Speed:
1G bit/sec |
| Operating
system: DOS |
Operating
system: Windows 2000, NT and Linux |
| Network
operating system: Novell NetWare, LAN Manager, 3Share |
Network
operating system: Novell NetWare, NT, Linux, Unix |
| Features:
None |
Features:
Bidirectional load balancing, resilient server links |
| Dimensions:
13.75 inches long by 4 inches high |
Dimensions:
6.6 inches long by 3 inches high |
| Price:
$300 |
Price:
$400 |
Related
links
Contact
Features Writer Suzanne Gaspar
|
|
|
|
Responsible for insuring the safety of your network?
NWFusion offers two FREE security e-mail newsletters to help you keep your enterprise network
secure.
Click here to sign-up.
Three free and easy ways to bring Network World's in-depth editorial content to your own Web site.
Learn more
|
