Best Enterprise Hub

Bay Networks Rules The Enterprise

Today's crop of intelligent modular hubs are nothing short of magic. With automatic fault recovery, 100-plus port capacities, the ability to support multiple networking topologies in the same box and super management software, these hubs offer more networking that's stable and easier to set up and repair. These hubs make the most sense in highly centralized environments with large numbers of nodes, while their stackable intelligent siblings are better suited to more dispersed computing environments with fewer nodes in any one location.
Bay Networks' SynOptics System 5000 offers the best combination of performance, fault recovery, security, ease and range of configuration, accuracy and clarity of presentation of statistics and quality of documentation across all topologies. The gamut of Ethernet, Token-Ring and FDDI, with all of their wiring permutations, is no problem for the System 5000.
Bytex Corp. takes a close second, hampered mostly by poorly organized management software documentation. Cabletron Systems recently introduced a new set of intelligent modular hubs. We expect Cabletron's hubs to seriously challenge current and future products from both Bay Networks and Bytex.
Intelligent modular hubs centralize physical connectivity, making it easy to reconfigure large networks to meet specific needs. Like the Bytex hub, the SynOptics System 5000 hub permits the dynamic assignment of ports on the same physical module to different networks using only management software. This feature saves shoe leather.
An important feature found only in the System 5000 box during our tests is intelligent hot swapability and movement of adapter modules. If a module is moved to another slot in the same chassis, configuration information follows the module. If a module is replaced with another module of the same type, previous configuration information is retained and applied to the module.

SynOptics System 5000 from
Bay Networks, $140-$200 per port, Bay Networks, 4401 Great America Pkwy., PO Box 58185, Santa Clara, CA 95052. (408) 988-2400; fax (408) 988-5525.

Runners-Up
Series 7700 Intelligent Switching Hubs, Bytex Corp., 4 Technology Dr., Westborough, MA 01581.
(508) 366-8000; fax (508) 366-7970.

MMAC Plus, Cabletron Systems, 35 Industrial Way, PO Box 5005, Rochester, NH 03866.
(603) 332-9400; fax (603) 337-2211.