Best Stackable Hub

HP's Stackable Hub Racks Up A Winner

The essence of stackable hubs is the ability to pay as you go. The trick is not to get locked into a low-end solution when your departmental network explodes with users. With Hewlett-Packard's AdvanceStack Hub, you can be sure you will pay a low price per managed port and still be able to grow toward the enterprise.
HP's hubs are packed with ports but still very well designed. HP really thought about the problems with stackable hubs. Not only are the Advance-Stack Hub's ports easy to reach, but the hubs have hooks so you can tie the cable out of your way. That's a nice touch.
Management is a necessary luxury. Alas, management software gets quite expensive on the high end. But HP's hub management software scales from a simple Windows version all the way to HP OpenView for Unix. We were able to browse and tinker with hubs shortly after installing OpenView for Windows. The software is powerful and simple to use. HP delivers on the philosophy of buying what you need now without getting locked in.
The hubs can be purchased with any number of ports per hub, ranging from 12 to 48. Also, these may be equipped with telco connectors to ease integration into the wiring closet. In addition, the AdvanceStack can be equipped with either 10BASE-T or 100 VG AnyLAN. HP also offers a bridging module to connect the two speeds together.
We'd like to see HP add to AdvanceStack Hub the ability to segment physical hubs into separate logical hubs or segments. Some users may need to take their existing stack, segment out the high-bandwidth users, and rou te or bridge between those segments.
Although Plexcom and Asante nip at the heels of HP, they cannot span the enterprise spectrum. No hub scales like the HP AdvanceStack, in both logical hub size and management software. Although we wouldn't recommend this in practice, HP hubs can be linked together to make up to 480 ports on the same segment, with no repeater hop-count problems.

AdvanceStack Hub, $899-$2,899, Hewlett-Packard Co.,
3000 Hanover St., Palo Alto, CA 94304.
(800) 533-1333; fax (800) 333-1917.

Runners-Up
PlexSTACK 4000, Plexcom, 2255 Agate Ct., Simi Valley, CA 93065. (805) 522-3333; fax (805) 583-4764.

Asante NetStacker, Asante
Technologies, 821 Fox La.,
San Jose, CA 95131.
(408) 435-8388; fax (408) 432-1117.