3Com unleashes small, medium office barrage

Santa Clara, Calif. - 3Com has introduced a batch of switches and hubs intended to help small and mid-size businesses boost the performance of their networks to handle bandwidth-hungry applications.

The new switches include a fiber version of 3Com's SuperStack II 3300 10M/100M/1000M bit/sec device, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet uplink module for that product.

The SuperStack II 3300 FX offers eight 100M bit/sec Fast Ethernet ports on multimode fiber, plus two autosensing 10/100M bit/sec copper ports. Up to four switches can be stacked for a total of 38 ports per stack, 3Com says.

The SuperStack II 3300 FX costs $6,995 and the 1000Base-SX module is priced at $995. Both offerings will ship in November.

The company also debuted a pair of 10/100M bit/sec switches. The SuperStack II 610 supports 24 10M bit/sec Ethernet ports, two 10/100M bit/sec ports and 6,000 media access control (MAC) addresses. The SuperStack II 630 supports 24 10/100M bit/sec autosensing ports and 12,000 MAC addresses. Both switches feature dynamic port buffer memory allocation to optimize performance based on network traffic. In addition, the switches boast two flow management algorithms to control congestion and decrease packet loss under heavy loads.

The 610 costs $1,295 and the 630 costs $2,995. Both switches will be available in October.

On the hub side, 3Com unveiled the OfficeConnect Dual Speed Hub 16, which is a 16-port 10/100 autosensing device.

3Com also unveiled the Dual Speed Hub 500, which comes in 12-port and 24-port flavors. Both versions support 10/100M bit/sec autosensing Ethernet on every port and an integrated two-port bridge to connect 10M bit/sec and 100M bit/sec users. The Dual Speed Hub 500 also comes with a converter kit that allows users to stack the new hub with 3Com's older Ethernet hubs.

"It's kind of nice, the fact that we can take some of our old hubs and cascade them with these new hubs and then manage them as if they were one device," says John Houlton, network manager at Application Profiles in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The 12-port Dual Speed Hub 500 costs $1,275, while the 24-port version costs $1,895. The cascade converter kit costs $199. All are available now.

Lastly, 3Com unwrapped the OfficeConnect 56K LAN Modem, which allows up to 10 users to access the Internet over standard analog lines. The OfficeConnect 56K LAN Modem combines the functionality of a modem, hub and router.

"It's very much a cost saver," says George Moseley, LAN administrator at Anixter in Memphis, Tenn. "On a monthly basis it probably saves $7,500."

The modem costs $349 and will be available next month.

More details from 3Com
with links to product sheets.