Cabletron Systems Inc has also launched what it claims is the industry’s first standards-based Fibre Distributed Data Interface over unshielded twisted pair hub-to-desktop networking system. The new products include modules for the company’s Multi Media Access Centre series of smart hubs and boards. The FDCMIM-24 and FDCMIM-28 are compatible with the latest draft of the Twisted pair Physical Medium Dependent, TP-PMD, standard from the American National Standards Institution. They provide four and eight ports, respectively, of FDDI connection to the desktop using unshielded twisted pair cable. Both of the modules communicate with Cabletron’s FDDI bridge and management module and other modules via the Flexible Network Bus of the Multi Media Access Centre . They are compatible with the company’s existing family of FDDI modules, which means that users can combine twisted pair, multi-mode and single-mode fibre FDDI concentrator modules in the same chassis. Each of the FDDI ports can be managed and controlled out-of-band using a console port on the FDMMIM or FDMMIM-04. The ports can also be managed using any SNMP network management system. Cabletron is also launching a series of personal computer boards, the F3019, F6019 and F7019, which supply unshielded twisted pair over FDDI communications for Micro Channel, NuBus and EISA architectures. The boards are ANSI TP-PMD compliant. Finally, the company says it is introducing a new series of single-mode FDDI modules and FDR-4000, a stand-alone, dual-attached multimode to single mode repeater.
