True to predictions Intel has launched a bundle of local networking products – 21 in all including local networking adapters, analysis tools and enhancements to its local networking printing products. On the adapter side of things the company has used its silicon experience to produce a lower chip count than normal. The company is also bundling SoftSet autoconfiguration software with the boards, a nice touch which means that users should not have to worry about interupt request lines (IRQs) during install-ation. The Ethernet adapter range comprises the EtherExpress – an 8-bit or 16-bit Industry Standard Architecture card for thick and thin cabling at UKP199 and the EtherExpress 16 TP for twisted pair media costing UKP225. There is no MCA card yet – one is expected next year, but the company has a 32-bit EISA card specifically designed for fileserver attachment to thin and thick Ethernet costing UKP899. Not surprisingly, the company does have a Microchannel adapter as part of its TokenExpress token ring adapter range, however it is only a 16-bit device. The TokenExpress MCA 16/4 costs UKP695, the other token offerings are the EISA 16/4 (UKP895) and the ISA 16/4 coming in at UKP695. More innovative is the range of local networking management tools. In particular Netsight Analyst is aiming at the soft under-belly of more expensive products such as Network General’s Sniffer. Costing UKP795 the software-only analyser comes on one disk and does its monitoring through a standard Ethernet adapter. The payoff is that it is tailored to Netware local networks and is consequently limited to decoding IPX/SPX, TCP/IP and Appletalk Packets. It also only offers limited analysis of performance bottlenecks. The other two offerings are NetSight Sentry – a hardware/software monitor that collects and displays a broad array of network statistics from token ring (UKP2,495) and Ethernet (UKP1,695) local networks which can be upgraded to NetSight Professional, its top of the range combined real-time monitor and protocol analyser costing UKP6,695 for Ethernet or UKP7,495 for the token ring version. A couple of enhancements to the company’s printing products: local networkingSpool – the utility that enables Netware clients to use printers attached to other clients now works with Microsoft Lan Manager and IBM Lan Server networks and is priced from UKP350. Also announced was a version of the Netport print server for 4Mbps or 16Mbps token rings.
