Asante Technologies Inc, provider of Ethernet and Fast Ethernet products, has launched a version of its NetDoubler network acceleration utility for Windows NT servers. The San Jose, California company originally released a version of NetDoubler for Apple Computer Inc Macintosh clients and servers in April, and in September released products for AIX, Silicon Graphics Inc and Sun Microsystems Inc servers. Asante says the NT version enhances network performance by addressing restrictions inherent in both the NT server and Macintosh client. NetDoubler operates as a network service on the NT server, running alongside NT’s File Service for Macintosh. It uses Apple’s Open Transport on the Macintosh to perform simultaneous AppleTalk and TCP/IP connections with the NT server. NetDoubler transparently switches to the faster TCP/IP protocol during file transfers. Asante says the NT server version works in conjunction with the NetDoubler Macintosh client to accelerate both ends of a network connection. NetDoubler for Windows NT server will be available in December. It supports NT 3.5.1 and 4.0 and will work with any Intel Corp Pentium or Pentium Pro, or Digital Equipment Corp Alpha servers. It costs $495 for the Pentium and Pentium Pro version, including two client licenses, and $1,300 for the Digital Alpha version including five client licenses. Existing NetDoubler users can get a maintenance update that enables existing client copies to communicate with NT servers. The update will be available to download free from the Asante web site at http://www.asante.com.
