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  Today's high-performance PCs quickly can saturate a shared 10-Mbps Ethernet segment. At the enterprise level, routing and switching are used to alleviate network congestion. However, in the workgroup environment, switching can be overkill. A simpler and more cost-effective solution is deploying segmentable hubs. We tested eight segmentable Ethernet hubs in our University of Wisconsin labs, focusing on ease of setup, ease of use, pricing, scalability and management.

To view the Report card. In the realm of segmentable workgroup hubs, bigger isn't always better. A high-density hub packed with features at an affordable price does, however, grab our attention. The 3Com Corp. SuperStack II PS Hub 50 offers just that, garnering our Editor's Choice award. Its simplified Web-based management, ease of setup, multiple security options and built-in segment communication put it ahead of its competitors. Although it wasn't the least expensive product we tested, the PS Hub 50 topped out in all of the other categories. Honorable mention goes to Hewlett-Packard Co.'s AdvanceStack 10BASE-T Switching Hub-24 (J3202A), which is right on the heels of the 3Com product, providing many of the same features, like port-switching, security options and load balancing. However, it lacks the convenience of a Web-based management interface.

The best value clearly is SMC Networks' TigerStack 3326Ta. It segments your overloaded network at a price well below its closest competitor. Priced at only $37 per port, the TigerStack is guaranteed to turn the heads of frugal workgroup managers.

Why Segmentable Hubs? Single-segment Ethernet hubs are sorely overburdened with traffic from today's high-end workstations. Applications, projects and data files have grown enormously, and bandwidth that was once adequate is now insufficient for busy, growing networks. As the number of workstations on your network increases, so does the number of network collisions. This is detrimental to network and user performance.

There are several solutions to this problem. You could purchase a router or two for the price of a small house. You could purchase Ethernet switches to separate your network into smaller segments--but that may be more than your network needs. Or you could choose to take the low-cost approach of segmentable hubs.

Segmentable hubs don't offer the blazing-speed performance of switches, nor do they provide you with the power of full-fledged routers. But they provide much better network performance for a much more reasona ble price. They work by placing users into segments, which significantly decreases the number of users on each part of your network. If users on different segments must interact, then you must provide some means of inter-segment communication. There are two options available with current segmentable hubs: The simpler hubs require you to connect a port in each segment to a switching device, enabling communication between segments while maintaining separate segments to improve performance; with higher-end hubs, this functionality is built into the unit.