* SMC Networks introduces products for three different kinds of LANs
SMC Networks continues to act like the hardest-working company in the LAN business – at least as far as product announcements are concerned. The company over the past month or so has released equipment for wireless, wireline and powerline.
The “powerline” portion came this week, as SMC previewed two products that build on the HomePlug standard, which defines a way to send network signals at up to 14M bit/sec over the electrical lines in your home. SMC already offers network adapters that plug into electrical outlets.
The Powerline to 802.11g 54M bit/sec Wireless Access Point creates an opportunity to extend a wireless network, while the Turbo Powerline to Ethernet Desktop Adapter uses the newer HomePlug 1.0 Turbo specification, which promises to crank speeds up to 85M bit/sec. SMC says it will introduce products compatible with the 200M bit/sec HomePlug AV standard early next year.
Also this week, SMC is shipping 16- and 24-port EZ Switch 10/100/1000 Gigabit “smart” switches for small businesses. These are copper-based, managed switches with an 8K MAC address table and jumbo frame support up to 9K bytes.
The 16-port version costs $330 and the 24-port version costs $400.
Last month, the company said it will expand its wireless LAN offerings with mesh networking products built on Accton Technology’s IEEE 802.11s-compliant Wireless Intelligent Transport Network architecture.
Wireless mesh networks are best used in large coverage areas where cable runs are impractical, SMC says. Each mesh access point interacts with the others, and if a mesh link is down, traffic is routed to other available links.
The products are expected to ship by year-end.
