3Com finally arrived at the gigabit Ethernet party being thrown by small businesses everywhere. Although lagging behind other SMB favorites such as Linksys and Netgear and even HP, at least 3Com appeared.
When early gigabit switches appeared in the small business space, they tended to have one gigabit port for a server and 10/100 megabits per second ports for users. If your users do little besides e-mail and office productivity applications, that may still be fine. However, anyone doing audio or video file manipulation, or moving large files around regularly, will appreciate the advantages of a gigabit swtch.
All servers now have gigabit ports, although you may see them listed as 10/100/1000 megabit ports. Almost all Network Attached Storage devices, even those you buy for only a few hundred dollars, have gigabit ports. Many desktop PCs the last few years have gigabit ports, although they remain rare on laptops.
If you haven't looked at your wiring support devices in a few years, you may be embarrassed at the weak and slow network in your business. Gigabit networking no longer means expensive networking. Upgrade your switch and wiring hubs, or replace those with switches, and speed up your network response for everyone.
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3Com has been at the Gigabit party for a long time
James,
Thanks for the mention of our new Gigabit SMB switching products. We are proud of their enterprise-caliber performance and benefits at small-business prices.
However, I must point out that these are not 3Com's first Gigabit switches in this space. For the past few years we have delivered Gigabit performance to SMBs with our Baseline 2800 and OfficeConnect switches.
The new products continue 3Com's price-performance leadership in the network industry. We - and our customers - have been at the Gigabit party for some time.
Kevin Flanagan
3Com Corporation
Marlborough, Mass.