taylor (03/30/83)
Several of the colleges and universities in our network are considering installing LAN's, and all are faced with the very fundamental problem of which technology is the most cost/performance effective. The basic technologies being considered are: 1) Switching with short hauls/muxes attached to a central device, a la Develcon Dataswitch, IS-4000, etc. 2) Coax LAN's, either csma/cd or token passing, a la Ungerman-Bass and Concord Data Systems Token-Net. 3) Voice/Data Switches, a la AIS 'Antelope' and Rolm. 4) Develcon's 'Develnet' (high speed trunked dataswitches with distributed technology, announced at Interface last week.) 5) Distributed switching multiplexors, a la Timeplex and Paradyne, among several others. Can anyone provide information from your experience on the criteria you used in choosing between the technologies? Also, I would be interested in costs of transmission media (twisted pairs, broadband/baseband coax) cost comparisons, as well as cost per connection of the different technologies. I will summarize results to the net of any replies which are not submitted to 'news', although I think most replies will be on news (hopefully). Steve Taylor NC Educational Computing Service ...!decvax!duke!mcnc!taylor (919) 549-0671
taylor (03/30/83)
Our only first hand experience is with the Develcon Dataswitch, but it is not used in a LAN-type environment. (At least 90% of the connections are from remote sites via multiplexor.) Using current list-price replacement value, the cost of a 400 line switch is about $200.00 per line ($80k total). At this size, the cost is becoming pretty linear. I have not recently calculated the price per line in the 100 line range. Steve Taylor NC Educational Computing Service ...!decvax!duke!mcnc!taylor (919) 549-0671