tiffanybangle3

The arrival of computers that plug into both Token Ring and Ethernet local-area networks is expected within the year, now that a chip vendor has begun supplying dual-protocol silicon in volume to computer makers.

Houston-based Texas Instruments, Inc. said late last month that it is shipping its TMS380C26 chips to personal computer vendors that will mount them right onto PC motherboards during manufacture. This would allow users to merge their PC and LAN hardware purchases and to have the option of tying a single PC into either Ethernet or Token Ring LANS. This "is just one less headache for the corporate MIS guy," said Paul Callahan, a senior analyst at market research firm Forrester Research, Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.

Like many large corporations, "we're big in both Token Ring and Ethernet," so the wholesale tiffany pendant PCs "would make recycling computers easier and ease the burden on repair and installation employees," said David Ericson, manager of network services at Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, ConnLeon Adams, open systems marketing manager at TI, said he expects product announcements and possibly shipments by November's Comdex/Fall '92 trade show in Las Vegas. He said the dual-networking capability should cost users the same or less than they would pay to add one extra network adapter card to their computers.

Ericson said he would be willing to pay a premium of about 25% of the cost of a $500 adapter card for the combined capability. He noted that in his current scenario of running two separate network cards in his PCs, "there is a problem with interrupt levels and memory allocation. If you're not a wizard at the internals of a PC, you're not going to be able to implement both."

Users will not be able to connect to both a Token Ring and an Ethernet at wholesale tiffany earring same tine. Whether they will have to make a manual or software-based configuration change to switch among LANs will be system-dependent, Adams said.TI will also reportedly bundle software drivers for the major network operating systems, such as Novell, Inc.'s NetWare, Microsoft Corp.'s LAN Manager and Banyan Systems, Inc.'s Vines, with the chips.The dual-protocol chip technology is expected to emerge within months from other chip makers, such as National Semiconductor, Inc. and Intel Corp. It should eventually find a home in other network devices, such as internetworking equipment and smart hub modules--"anything that would be considered a network node," Adams explained.The moves will "make LANs wholesale tiffany necklace free," Callahan said.However, smart hub and adapter card giant Cabletron Systems, Inc., for one, is not planning to implement the chips in its products.

"Those chips won't deliver any added flexibility that outweighs the additional burdens and costs they generate," such as possibly requiring add-on daughter cards, said Chris Oliver, director of engineering and manufacturing at Cabletron.He also aluded to possible performance issues with the combined technology, wholesale silver bracelet Adams said customer tests of the chip show Token Ring performance to be at the same level of TI's current stand-alone Token Ring chip and Ethernet performance to be "very competitive."

For years, multimedia has been branded as a specialized application with the ability to weave voice, video and animation with traditional text and images on stand-alone personal computers.Multimedia applications were beyond the reach of network users because few companies considered the ramifications of running them across a network."Right now, there are essentially no multimedia (applications) on networks," says John Gale, wholesale tiffany ring of the Information Workstation Group, an Alexandria, Va., consultancy.Rut all that is about to change.Digital Equipment Corp., IBM and Lotus Development Corp. are set to charge into the market this month with a volley of products that analysts predict will bring legitimacy to multimedia applications for networks. The result will likely be an uptick in user demand for multimedia, with firms increasingly turning to their network managers to support the technology across company networks.