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The 'C' in NIC stands for 'Controller', not 'Card'.

some people, including 3Com and Cisco, disagree with you.

Looks like Cisco is copying a 3Com innovation that has been available for over a year. 3Com OSM's are not only available for their routers, but also their 5500G switches.

http://www.3com.com/osn/

Not completely related, since its not a laptop but a company I do consulting work for have a 3com 16 port switch, that when first purchased sat on a desk in the "server room" (read beside a photocopier in a closet). Well we finally upgraded to a rack mount for their servers and i went to mount it on the rack only to find.................no brackets. Having owned this for about 4 or 5 years, I figured that best case I might find some generic parts, worst case, I get out the dremel and start hacking at a metal plate to make my own. Turns out 3com still had the part number listed for the bracket mount on their support page, and so I called them. The rep I got was super nice (at 5 to 5pm on a Friday afternoon no less), i gave her the part number for the switch, she confirmed the bracket sku, and asked for a mailing address. I gave it to her and asked how much for shipping and the part. Nothing. Not for the part or the shipping, and it was next day UPS to Canada. Doing a quick google for the policy on 3com's website, I got this:

http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/warranty/descri ption/index.html
(the 16430 would fall under the 2 year unmanaged switch category).

So not only was everything free, and fast, but the warranty is more like a suggestion guide to the reps. FYI I even flat out stated, "I lost my rack mounts when we moved the office to another building a year and a half ago, can I even order just the mounts?"

all in all, 2 thumbs up for 3com.

3com begs to differ. As do the millions of people out there with domains beginning with numbers (myself included).

but instead they faded into obscurity

not exactly they got bought out...

http://www.3com.com/

Don't tell 3com that.

If your vendor does not supply a linux driver for your hardware, whose fault is that? It is not a problem with Linux. It is a problem with your hardware vendor. There are companies that supply linux drivers for their hardware. Hell, even Dell supplies linux drivers for some of their RAID controllers.

If your hardware manufacturer provided drivers for everything BUT Windows, would you complain about Microsoft or the hardware vendor?

Hooptie

What flavor Kool-Aid are you drinking?

I don't think you can find (easily at least) Kool-Aid over this side of the atlantic, and from what I hear it's rather disgusting anyway. Ie, I don't drink any flavour.

Hardware manufacturers will be highly unlikely to even care about Solaris on x86 because it has a market share that is a rounding fo OS/2 let alone Linux.

Gosh, good point. I hadn't realised that no hardware
vendors provided Solaris drivers. Thanks for pointing that out. (And thats just a small sample). Further, some code included with Solaris is provided by ISVs and could not be GPLed.

Sun is simply using fear of GPL to hide the fact they sat on their butts when the battle for market share was being waged.

Sun are not afraid of the GPL, as I explained above, the GPL just wasn't right for opening Solaris, for practical reasons. If Sun were afraid of the GPL then why would Sun have spent so much engineer resources on getting GNOME into shape to replace CDE on Solaris? Why would Sun have LGPLed OpenOffice? Why would I be working on a GPL project?

Ohhh... so it's kind of like Linux?

No, cause Linux has driver support

Hello,

3Com makes the unimpressively-named 3CRPAG175, a CardBus card with an XJack-style retractable antenna.

I use one in my IBM ThinkPad T23 and it works quite well--no problems with the antenna getting stuck or failing to retract.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

3Com makes the unimpressively-named 3CRPAG175, a CardBus card with an XJack-style retractable antenna.

I use one in my IBM ThinkPad T23 and it works quite well--no problems with the antenna getting stuck or failing to retract.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Not if they go better than consumer grade wireless. 3Com provides access points that support up to 253 simultaneous connections up to 100 meters. And that's their low and mid grade WAP. Their high grade can also do 108mbps and support 253 users within 100 meters.

So figure 2 of them (redundancy, long planes), between $400-$800 per (depending on model), plus one of 3Com's wirless switches/routers in the plane would be more than fine.

Cost per plane, around $2500-$4000 (actually much less since they'll have contracts and be buying in bulk) for the hardware, and negligible labor costs. The more expensive part would be hooking the router/switch into the antennae on the plane, and wiring the WAPs for power (simple switch boxes in the planes' already in place electrical systems could do this for a negligible cost).

Cost of running CAT-5 cable throughout each plane, millions of dollars in dismantling the plane and then running the cable, and then setting up all the switches, and then testing it all. Even if done during high end maintenence where the plane would come apart anyway, it would still cost tons of money in CAT-5, plus all the switches (as you'll quickly reach the distance limit with the twists and turns to the seats and the rounded shape of the plane).

1-2 WAPs and 1 wirless switch, much less than your 6-8 WAPs and wireless switch. And MUCH less expensive than running wire through every plane already in service. Maybe for new planes they could put BOTH in, wires for those not with WiFi, and WiFi for those who have it and wish to use it. I know for damn sure that I'm not carrying around some CAT-5 cable with me, my laptop (which I'm on now) has only 1 wire running to it right now, the power cord. I'm not bringing any amount of CAT-5 for my perfectly capable WiFi enabled iBook, unless I know ahead of time that the hotel I am staying at does not have WiFi but does have Ethernet.

Not if they go better than consumer grade wireless. 3Com provides access points that support up to 253 simultaneous connections up to 100 meters. And that's their low and mid grade WAP. Their high grade can also do 108mbps and support 253 users within 100 meters.

So figure 2 of them (redundancy, long planes), between $400-$800 per (depending on model), plus one of 3Com's wirless switches/routers in the plane would be more than fine.

Cost per plane, around $2500-$4000 (actually much less since they'll have contracts and be buying in bulk) for the hardware, and negligible labor costs. The more expensive part would be hooking the router/switch into the antennae on the plane, and wiring the WAPs for power (simple switch boxes in the planes' already in place electrical systems could do this for a negligible cost).

Cost of running CAT-5 cable throughout each plane, millions of dollars in dismantling the plane and then running the cable, and then setting up all the switches, and then testing it all. Even if done during high end maintenence where the plane would come apart anyway, it would still cost tons of money in CAT-5, plus all the switches (as you'll quickly reach the distance limit with the twists and turns to the seats and the rounded shape of the plane).

1-2 WAPs and 1 wirless switch, much less than your 6-8 WAPs and wireless switch. And MUCH less expensive than running wire through every plane already in service. Maybe for new planes they could put BOTH in, wires for those not with WiFi, and WiFi for those who have it and wish to use it. I know for damn sure that I'm not carrying around some CAT-5 cable with me, my laptop (which I'm on now) has only 1 wire running to it right now, the power cord. I'm not bringing any amount of CAT-5 for my perfectly capable WiFi enabled iBook, unless I know ahead of time that the hotel I am staying at does not have WiFi but does have Ethernet.

Apples to Oranges.
You had Cisco Smartnet, they don't advanced replace for warranty period without a contract.
Guess what? Neither does 3com.
If you would have purchased 3com's maintenance contract, http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab= features&pathtype=purchase&sku=WEBCSO3CS10 7 , they would have given you advanced replacement too.

The NY Times article also neglected to mention this little tidbit.

For anyone who's buying from them, stay away from the accessories. Mice are universal, PS/2 or USB. Laptop hard drives are universal, and the only thing you might need to worry about is height (9.5mm or smaller?). Laptop memory may not be completely universal, but it's pretty easy to find compatible stuff. All or virtually all external USB storage devices are compatible with Linux.

This is as big/bad as it gets:

There are many situations where I need more than one card. Onboard NICs, especially when they're Realtek, are terribly unreliable as well (the failure rate for onboard Realtek I've dealt with may be as high as 1 in 4). As much as you'd like onboard Intel, don't count on it in most boards when a manufacturer can save $3.

3Com's problem? Go find their product on a big box store shelf. IF they have it (most won't carry it - it simply won't sell and shelf space commands a premium), it's $59-$79 per unit, compared to $16.95 to $19.95 a unit for Belkin/Dlink/Linksys. Often consumers can find a $5 to $15 rebate (combination of in-store and mail in) on top of that price.

According to 3Com's reps I've talked with lately, this is not viewed as a problem "because that's a market we don't care about anymore." Obviously, as you don't compete. But what /do/ you care about?

Filing patents. Honestly, check this link. It would appear to some that 3Com's heading down the path of the future dot-com: the tech litigator/patent holding company. (Good news: David Boies might have another client after SCO can no longer pay his rates)

3Com's been pushing firewall on a stick. Embedded firewall (via proprietary standard) technology, which has a little appeal but is too esoteric for the PHBs, and too lacking interoperability for the geeks. The current employment market makes it somewhat unwise for the recommender geek to push a hard to explain proprietary niche product to the boss when everyone else's product interoperates just fine (at a much lower price) without this feature.

1000base-T used all four wire pairs, yes, but it was extremely limited in length. (10m, IIRC). 1000Base-TX goes the full 100m, uses all four wire pairs, and is full duplex on all wires simeltaneously.

Source, please?

1000base-T does go 100 meters.

Okay, I checked and found that 1000base-TX does exist and is TIA-EIA-854 (1000base-T is IEEE 802.3ab), indeed uses all 4 pairs of wires, but each pair is half-duplex. In addition, CAT6 cable is required for the additional (analog) bandwidth.

And the devices on the market are still 1000base-T. See for example Intel and Cisco: both say 1000base-T and 802.3ab, both go 100m at gigabit speed, and 1000base-TX is nowhere in sight.

Considering that 1000base-T & 1000base-TX are incompatible, and devices would not sell if they don't work with Intel and Cisco, I'd say 99% or more of current gigabit stuff on the market are 1000base-T, not TX.

Except for GigE (who uses GigE anyway?)

As soon as you start pushing DVD ISO images or AV files around like you used to push CD ISO and MP3 files around on your LAN, you'll quickly see the need for GigE. (Granted, it'll just move the bottleneck to a different point, but it's still a worthwhile upgrade.)

100Mbps LAN is capable of moving 17.5 to 26.0 gigabytes per hour across the network (at a roaring 5.0 to 7.5 Mb/sec). That means a DVD ISO image is going to take 10-15 minutes and a 50Gb tape backup will take 2-3 hours to move from A to B.

GigE, of course, can easily multiply that performance level by 5 or 7 (doubt you'll see 10x improvement, but you might). Hitting the disks on the server is almost as fast as hitting the local disks in my workstation. Pretty much a no-brainer upgrade now with 8-port workgroup switches for $150 on the street, managed 24-port switches around $1800, and GigE server NICs around $120.

The upgrade to PCI-X might be relatively smooth since it appears that a card can be designed to work in both style systems. (e.g. the website for 3com's GigE Server NIC indicates that it works with both PCI-X and 64-bit PCI.)

I believe so. This is the same Royal that got reamed when they were caught pilfering Palm, Inc. code. It turns out I have one of the DaVinci's that contains the stolen code (My mother's husband gave it to me about two years ago).

I owned a Royal DaVinci (the original line of DaVinci's that Royal had out) and was very hurt when the lawsuit with palm (Link - Link - Google Search) because Royal stole code from the PalmOS source and used it in that line of products. While the UI was fairly nice and I liked the Royal Davinci, soon after I received it I found that Royal basically stopped supporting it. It had been a great deal, and I had been hoping to get a lot of use out of it, but software and accessories never made it to market that were supposed to, and Royal was not allowed to continue supporting the device during and after the lawsuit.

It left me as a customer fairly hurt, so it is understandable that I'd be just a bit cautious before spending 400.00 on a product made by Royal. I doubt they'd make such a mistake again... especially if they are using an open-source platform, but I'd still be very cautious, I've lost a lot of faith in them as a company.

Probably referring to this

I much prefer Cat5/e for Phone systems because if ever a critter nibbles on a cat5 they got a ways further to chew through, and you've got 4 pair instead of just 2-3. The Coaxial idea many have mentioned seems sound, I would also make sure they all terminate wherever you have room for a coax-amp/head end. I guess Ideally just create an environment just like a professional cabler would. Label everything on any endpoint, and keep everything standard, if you are trying to decide on the fiber/copper debacle I would say Fibre is much too expensive to screw around with, and probably not necessary (unless your head end isn't going to be the area you're running your server room from, and in that case a single strand to your server room *might* make sense.) I'm not sure what the cheapest gear you could get for fibre would be, I'm sure 3com sells something resonably affordable (1200-2400 dollar range for a decent 10/100/1000)

Still unless there were some extenuating circumstances I wouldn't see any need for much more than a gig in the near future, but then again as long as the conduit is there, you can always retrofit.

Except for the folks on dialup. And don't say you can't get a worm from dialup. The payloads are really tiny - it doesn't take that long on 56K. I have personally seen two computers infected with blaster via a dialup connection. If you're on there browsing the web for more than 30 minutes or so, the chances are quite good you'll get one, what with all the scans happening. Most ISPs are blocking the ms networking ports at their border, but within a segment, it's a free for all.

The only hardware solution is to get a 2nd PC to be the gateway and run iptables on it (not practical), or to get an Apple Airport which will do that for you (because it has a built-in modem), but that's too expensive. I haven't found any other hardware solutions for dialup users - do any exist that are reasonably priced? (read: no more expensive than a linksys home router)

3Com used to have a device it called a "LAN modem"...it was a 56K modem, router, and 4-port (?) hub all in one box. A currently-available product that would do the same thing is the Actiontec Dual PC Modem...Fry's sells these for about $70. The specs page says it has a built-in firewall, and you can combine it with a switch, wireless access point, or whatever to make it available to more than two computers.

(A quick check indicates that while 3Com has discontinued the OfficeConnect 56K LAN Modem, the OfficeConnect Dual 56K LAN Modem is a currently-available product. It'll combine two dial-up connections and make them available. At about $300, it's considerably more expensive than the Actiontec product...and if you're going to pay for two phone lines and two dial-up accounts, you might as well bite the bullet and upgrade to broadband.)

3Com has some WiFi Products you might consider.

Well as somebody that load tests hardware often enough a server class PCI based NIC can do close to 100Mbit a sec to a switch while running full duplex. It's the Gigabit nics that still for the most part dont come close to there rated speeds with many not even able halh of there rated speeds.

Here is an old test showing 93megabits a sec sustained 5 years ago on server class hardware. http://www.3com.com/corpinfo/en_US/technology/2003 99.html

Remember the horrible, easy-to-lose dongles, and the fragile and unreliable pop-out connectors? Remember how THEN double-height PCMCIA cards came into vogue, since they were actually big enough to fit on some real connectors?

There are other solutions. For example my company used this one, which didn't only work with every telephone network it tried (Israel, Italy, England, Taiwan, US), it had this patented connector that doesn't require a dongle. All you need is innovation, and these things could be greate.

3Com doesn't think it's wrong.

You could get a 3Com 10/100 PCMCIA card with built in Firewall and IPSEC.

And for your desktop, you could get a 3Com 10/100 PCI LAN card with build in Firewall and IPSEC.

You could get a 3Com 10/100 PCMCIA card with built in Firewall and IPSEC.

And for your desktop, you could get a 3Com 10/100 PCI LAN card with build in Firewall and IPSEC.

Well there's the suggestion of the other poster, but the embedded solutions are usually quiet and cheap. You may be able to find on eBay a used 3COM 3C886 (there's a ISDN model as well as a two modem model available). Don't forget to check the mom-and-pop shops (got mine that way), and make certain that you have the latest firmware, so that people can dial in and access a server (if you have one), along with a few other enhancements.

And at around USD$55, is a lot cheaper than the alternative.

I've installed a few of these for clients who were unable to get broadband, were unwilling to pay more for broadband versus cheap dialup, or were in need of a backup link. Yes, sharing a 56K connection in an office network is hideously slow. It's bad enough sharing a dialup connection with my wife, a bookkeeper, when she needs to update Quicbooks' tax tables. "To hell with your clients, dear, I need to read Slashdot!"

Maybe didn't make myself clear... 2 PCI Network cards + the onboard = 3 in total.

I probably just failed to read carefully enough. Sorry.

Think INTERNET, LAN and DMZ.

Why not route DMZ by IP rather than separate interface?

and I agree it uses a little bit of CPU, but then so do 90% of modems nowadays.

That's why I won't use Winmodems either.

Another product that you might want to be aware of: 3COM makes a dual-port NIC. It's pricey, but quite nice. Intel makes a competing product, but I'd rather go with the 3COM.

About a year and a half ago, I did 3 months of research on a new phone system for both customer service and regular office users in my company. We wanted something that had every feature known to man (like voice prompts, announced hold times, visual call management, tracking software, database integration), but we were also on a tight budget-- in this case, around $70k for an intial roll-out of 50 stations.

I evaluated pretty much every system out there, from the "real" PBXs made by ComDial, NEC, Toshiba, and Lucent / Avaya, to the "soft" PBXs made by 3Com, Artisoft, Alcatel, and Interactive Intelligence... Bouncing features and quotes off of at least two dozen different sales agents.

My conclusion:

Best Features available ANYWHERE without completely breaking the bank: Interative Intelliengce I3 Phone System

Best Bang for your buck: Artisoft Televantage

Runner Up: 3Com NBX100

The "real" PBXs that ran their own OS and didn't have Linux or Win2k at the core just couldn't compete with the features of their younger cousins from smaller companies. Of course the tradeoff was reliability. You could expect even a 10-year-old NEC PBX to keep running exactly the same, never crashing, pretty much until the end of time. However if you just had to have those features (like database integration, custom voice prompts, etc...) with 99.99999% uptime, I would have to be prepared to spend well over $150k... which I wasn't going to do.

I finally decided on TeleVantage for my company, and a year and a half later, we are still happy with this system. It does have it's problems though-- it's never exactly crashed, but it has had some mysterious slow-down issues that calls for a reboot about once every 3 weeks. We also had a database corruption that caused us to restore from a backup about a year after installation-- but all in all, its a fantastic system with every feature you could want.

As for the others in my final 3:

Interactive Intelligence was by far the system that impressed me the most out of all the ones that I looked at. It had even more features than TV (the ability to record EVERY call and store them in a seperate database for instance), but for the most part those two were very similar. Both had great Outlook integration. Both had visual call management. Both could do everything we wanted. Two things really set I3 apart from TV. First, they had the best design tool anywhere. Database integration, even with our PostgreSQL DB, required virtually no programming. You created call flows in the design tool like it was a flow chart in MS Project. The other thing that set I3 apart from TV was the price. I3 was about 50% more expensive than TV, and that was the only reason why I didn't go for it.

3Com NBX100 looked like a great system. One of it's best features was that it could support 200+ users on an IP network, making it unneccesary to wire our new building for both Cat.3 and Cat.6. Unfortunately, at the time, the $10k difference in wiring costs was still less than the difference in prices for 3Com IP phones vs. regular phones that use Cat.3. The NBX100 also had most of the features we were looking for... like visual call management, custom prompts, etc... But it couldn't do announced hold times (which was a requirement for me) without an expensive extra piece of hardware from a third party that would have doubled the price. Even doubled though, the price of the NBX100 system (which would have been around $35k for us) was still fairly competitive with what we were expecting to pay. However, I was unwilling to rely on an all-IP system. The NBX was still a new system at the time and it had been rumored to have echo and other voice quality issues. Of course the 3Com reps denied it, but I couldn't really take the chance.

--

Also go check out the Cisco CallManager, and the 3Com NBX.

I've worked with the Cisco system, and I know that it has call detail capability. It does run Windows 2000. However, it was pretty reliable. I've talked to others running the NBX, and they swear by it.

That all being said, don't rule out the standard telephony players. Although their systems aren't VOIP based, many of them have hooks for VOIP and network management. Many are still hurting after the telecom boom went bust, so you could probably get a decent deal.

Yup this is old news. We bought ours from 3Com

It can be annoying because if you want to run several phones on one drop, they need power supplies if you don't want to use an expensive inline power capable switch.

Have you looked at these?

They're basically four-port switches that you mount in place of your normal wall jack. They cost about a hundred bucks, support power over ethernet, and there's even a managed version.

I use this extensively with my Lucent/Orinoco wireless APs. Been doing it for about 2 years now. It's also part of 3Com's Ethernet switch/jack technology, and has been implemented for VoIP.

I've found it to be a godsend for my wireless APs, as I can mount my APs near the ceiling (away from students), and not have to worry about finding an outlet, or having them unplugged by the cleaning crew!

True story:

I had an Aironet 340 access point that was missing its antennae and required a damn serial cable and terminal to be configured by command line. I got sick of it, and decided to sell it on eBay. It went for $200 with multiple bids.

After that, I went and bought a D-Link 714P+ router, which had a built in switch, built in print server (works with Linux, although not supported), SPI, higher encryption (256 bit WEP), twice the speed if you use their hardware, anteannae, and Web Based administration (no shitty serial cable for me) for $170.

I actually made money by switching to a better product!

I can't imagine why anyone would buy Cisco equipment on the low end or the high end anymore, except for consistency among equipment maybe.

3com's wireless page doesn't list any 802.11g equipment yet. The only 802.11g cards I've seen in person were the Linksys WPC54G & WMP54G.

I was looking for compatibility between Linux and 802.11g last night; I found someone saying "long story short, Broadcom doesn't work" (Note: That link is down, and checking nearby files pop up errors about "vulnerable Internet Explorer version," closes the window, and probably fucks up my computer. Thanks a lot guys. Um. The upshot is, people have tried the Broadcom stuff on Linux, it doesn't work, and it's suggested you request documentation from Broadcom. Later.)

New house, old dis-continued product? I don't know about you, but if I am going to go through customizing my new kitchen/house, it is for a product I can get a warranty for...

Here at work we use a 3Com NBX 100 system .

I've FTP'd into it and it seems to be running some sort of a BSD variant.

I guess it could also run linux.. but I don't quite feel like pokeing around in our production telephone system.

1. 3COM 3C996-SX, 3COM 3C985B
2. Allied Telesyn AT-2970SX/2SC Dual Link1000BaseSX, 2x SC fiber
3. Asante FriendlyNET GigaNIX 1000SX
4. Compaq NC6136 Gigabit Server Adapter
5. D-Link DGE-550SX Fiber Gigabit Adapter
6. Farallon PN9000SX, HP 1000BASE-SX Gigabit Ethernet LAN Adapter
7. IBM Gigabit Ethernet SX Server Adapter
8. Intel PRO/1000 XF Server Adapter
9. GA621 NetGear Fiber Gigabit Ethernet Card
10. SMC SMC9462SX Tiger Card 1000
11. SysKonnect 1000BASE-SX PCI Adapter
12. Toshiba 1GB Ethernet Adapter.

Last time I checked, they didn't make fiber PCI NICs.

Perhaps you should check again? 3COM makes a rather nice PCI Fiber NIC, it apparently even does onboard IPSec.

SPECIFICATIONS
This chapter provides the following information:
. 10/100/1000Base-T Cable Specifications
. Performance Specifications
. Physical Characteristics
. Power Requirements
. Environmental Specifications
Table 6 10/100/1000Base-T Cable Specifications
Port Type Connector Media Maximum Distance
10Base-T RJ-45 Cat. 3, 4, or 5 UTP 100 meters (325 feet)
100/1000Base-T RJ-45 Cat. 5 UTP 100 meters (325 feet)
1000Base-T signaling requires four twisted pairs of Category 5 balanced cabling,
as specified in ISO/IEC 11801:1995 and ANSI/EIA/TIA-568-A (1995) and tested
for additional performance using testing procedures defined in TIA/EIA TSB95.

SPECIFICATIONS
This chapter provides the following information:
. 10/100/1000Base-T Cable Specifications
. Performance Specifications
. Physical Characteristics
. Power Requirements
. Environmental Specifications
Table 6 10/100/1000Base-T Cable Specifications
Port Type Connector Media Maximum Distance
10Base-T RJ-45 Cat. 3, 4, or 5 UTP 100 meters (325 feet)
100/1000Base-T RJ-45 Cat. 5 UTP 100 meters (325 feet)
1000Base-T signaling requires four twisted pairs of Category 5 balanced cabling,
as specified in ISO/IEC 11801:1995 and ANSI/EIA/TIA-568-A (1995) and tested
for additional performance using testing procedures defined in TIA/EIA TSB95.

Here is a nice comparison of B and A on 80211 planet. Also, a whitepaper for A is available at Proxim Communications. Also, don't forget the FAQ!

My personal feeling about this: The U.S. government should sponsor a 802.11a nationwide network, so we can all have cell phone and data access anywhere, and a provider can 'buy' an area from the government to charge wireless rates for. Kind of like the current system we have in place for land-line phones.

Everyone comes out happy:
the cell phone company has a local monopoly
the customer has access to wireless data and phone everywhere
the government 's pocket gets fatter.

Before this, the only generic Wi-Fi bridge was proprietary ...

I've had two 3Com Wireless LAN Workgroup Bridges connected to my Linksys AP for about 8 months now. The only difference I see is that the Linksys product is quite a bit cheaper.

Have you considered PoE-based solutions? Here's one from 3Com, the NJ100 Network Jack (and a review of it by Tom's Hardware). While the NJ100 is not intended for use inside a closed box, using one of these would allow you to route power along with data between the various modules in one of your systems.