* Asante’s latest LAN switch
Asante Technologies last week released an Ethernet switch for small and medium-sized businesses that the company is billing as “plug-and-play.”
The FriendlyNet GX5-448W has quality-of-service features and Web-based management capabilities, which Asante says make the switch easy to deploy. The company says no configuration is required for basic connections.
The switch has 48 ports of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet. It has two ports for copper-based Gigabit Ethernet, which could be used to connect to servers or to other switches. And it has two slots for Gigabit interface converters (GBIC). GBICs are available for multimode and single-mode fiber-optic connections.
The switch has basic features, such as port mirroring and traffic classification and prioritization. The suggested retail price is $700, or $14 per port, counting the Gigabit ports, but not counting the GBIC slots.
Asante has been around for 16 years, and it specializes in LAN gear that is inexpensive yet has advanced features. The company has been undergoing a bit of renovation and reorganization. As it received private equity financing in August, Asante got a new chairman and CEO, Jeff Lin, who also co-founded the company in 1988 with Wilson Wong, the previous chairman and CEO. In October, Lin hired a new vice president of marketing and a new vice president of operations.
Asante recently underwent a marketing refresh, replacing its burgundy logo with a green one and dropping the accent off the “e” in its name. It also moved to a new location in San Jose. Obviously, the company is trying to reposition itself for success.
