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Looking For Portable Ethernet Hubs?
Lynk asks: "I often have to network a couple of machines (normally 2x laptops and a palmtop) together and sometimes into a client's network, too, so I've been looking for a suitable Ethernet Hub. Nice and small so I can carry it about in my laptop case but without a PSU twice as big as the hub. Four ports is fine. Preferably battery powered. I have used x-over cables a bit but they eliminate connecting to a client's network. Anyone have any ideas or have done this already?"
We use these at work actually all over the place (fully switched network to our cubicles, but in the engineering department we have a tendency to have a minimum of 3 computers, usually higher, in our cubes). The one I have for my laptop is called a Soho Basic Hub205. It's a little 5 port 10base hub that gets powered by a fairly standard, and small wall wart. I suggest just driving over to your local computer shop and seeing what they're aiming at the easy-to-use, computer equipment is scary market. The things are cheap enough that if it turns out that the model you picked does something stupid you can just buy a new one.
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I'd like to agree. If that Palm can go wireless he is set, just put a PCMCIA ethernet card in one (linux) laptop, and let the laptop route to wireless when you need to connect to someone else's machine/network. Just get two cables, one crossover, one normal and your set.
Many buisnesses nowadays have waveLan or similear installed (I think waveLan is biggest, but I'm not sure) which means with DHCP you can connect directly to their network as needed.
Again, the palm might be a problem, but AFAIK you can't connect ethernet to that either, so you should be able to go wireless. If you don't go wireless you will kick yoruself the first time one of your ethernet cables breaks just before a presentation and you can't do what you want. (Although I suppose some cusomters may have so much wireless congestion or RF noise that this isn't perfect either)
That's kind of useless when he has laptops and a palmtop.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
It's a passthru port. You cannot plug it in without drawing current from the keyboard port, which will cause the internal keyboard to shut off. Instead of a bulky transformer power supply, now you get to carry around a full size keyboard. All the hubs I know that draw their power like this are keyboard passthru; I haven't heard of one that works with a mouse (although the power for a mouse and keyboard could be the same; I don't know). At any rate, it would still be the same problem; using the mouse port would disable the internal mouse, forcing you to carry a mouse around.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
aside from their very cool purple color, they have 2 big advantages:
a) they have nice, durable, steel cases, just perfect for bumping around and surviving.
b) they're made by nortel. very nice equipment.
they do get a wee bit warm, but they've held up nicely over the years...
stored on computers from birth to the grave
Why buy old technology that just works when you can spend a lot more for a wireless ethernet card in each machine and be totally cool ?
One machine can have one of those obsolete non-wireless cards in it, so you can plug into your clients hopelessly out of date non-wireless network, and route through that machine.
I'm actually saying this only half tongue-in-cheek. If you have the cash to be carting around multiple laptops and a palm, you can afford it. It depends on the business you are in, but the coolness factor of that might get you enough new business to pay for itself the first time out.
These things are almost generic items now. When I needed to hook up a bunch of nodes in my dorm room I just nosed around in the nearby CompUSA for a few minutes and came out with the second least-expensive 4-port hub I could find. The one I got is probably smaller than a zip-drive, and would fit in my laptop case just fine. The PSU isn't huge, either. Just make sure to get one with an uplink switch on one of the ports, so you don't have to use crossover cable.
Oh, and don't get the absolute cheapest one, either. It generally comes in a white box and rattles when you shake it.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
D-Link do/did a 5-port portable hub that can take its power from a PS2 or DIN keyboard/mouse connector that was purpose designed for such arrangements.
...an Englishman in London.
Novell guy doing demo here last week had a double-thick PCMCIA card that had four RJ45 jacks, and was a 5-port hub. I have emailled him for product details (as I would like one too :+)
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-=DaveHowe=-