From owner-freebsd-hardware Sat Jun 29 23:53:24 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA11351 for hardware-outgoing; Sat, 29 Jun 1996 23:53:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from flubber.futurecomm.com (bbecker@flubber.futurecomm.com [205.247.49.222]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id XAA11302; Sat, 29 Jun 1996 23:53:17 -0700 (PDT) From: bbecker@flubber.futurecomm.com Received: from localhost (bbecker@localhost) by flubber.futurecomm.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id CAA00940; Sun, 30 Jun 1996 02:53:23 -0400 Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 02:53:22 -0400 (EDT) To: Gary Palmer cc: "Jacob M. Parnas" , Henry Spencer , hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, bsdi-users@bsdi.com Subject: Re: muliport boards - building a PPP dialup server In-Reply-To: <12159.836029448@palmer.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 29 Jun 1996, Gary Palmer wrote: > > Why connect at high speeds with a UART: money. Most ethernet solutions > > cost well over $1000 not counting the ethernet hardware which may not be at > > home. (card, tranceiver or hub, cables, etc). I've seen a PC Card that > > costs $199-$319 depending on who you are, and it does everything with a UART > > on top (the software driver for BSDI will be $95. So, how does $400 sound to > > I'm sorry? I cabled and equipped a LAN at home for less than $1000, > for 3 machines (2 PC's, and one `other') (admittedly 10b2, not 10bT > which is what I would go for today). Figuring the price of cheap ethernet cards to be under $40US, you should be able (today) to connect 3 machines for something like $200US including the cost of wire and rj-45 connecters. For a network that small, you can get away with not having a hub. You get away with no hub by swapping the RX and TX pairs on the cables connecting one box to another. Of course one of the boxes has to have two cards, and it also has to be able to route packets between the other two boxes. (Since this is 'bsdi-users', i'm presuming that a BSDI box would be filling that role). But the price of hubs has dropped dramatically. An Accton 8-port 10bt hub is something like $125 if i'm not mistaken. A little black thing about the size of the lizard book. If you prefer white, you can get the same hub from 3Com, Bill