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3Com's 10/100 Switching... Wallplate
An anonymous reader wrote in to say "Tom's hardware has an exclusive review of the new 3Com Network Jack. This is a 4-port 10/100 switch that fits in a standard-sized wallplate." Alright, thats a good idea (he says while accidentally kicking the switch hidden under his desk). Having run more then my share of ethernet drops in the past, I gotta say I dig this idea.
Honey! Can I change my Christmas list from socks to a 4-port wall...
Huh?
Oh, it's so you can connect four computers in one location.
Yeah....yeah....
But...
Someday the dog might need an Ethernet port, too.
Oh, whatever! Get me the damned tie then!
Women! Grrrr....
- Bill
I got an offer in the mail for a free one of these. Just gotta fill out a survey at http://www.3com.com/customer_first (no html link because I'm lazy). Of course you need a customer code on the post card. *grin*
Will it protect it from the wierd guy in networking that once shorted out the phone system while rewiring his ethernet port because he decided it was too slow for his everquest games? Is it armored to protect it from the REALLY wierd guy from R & D that was running around the comms room with a broadsword?
(The really sad part is, I'm not kidding. I actually work with these people.)
*prepares new resume*
I am !amused.
...it included an 802.11b wireless bridge, we could do away with cabling altogether :)
Actually, 3com's talking about incorporating 802.11 and bluetooth into the thing shortly.
Gotta be fully buzzword-compliant, you know.
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Haivng a technically minded guy around is great..:) :)
:)
The wall-ports at my work each have 6 ethernet connections, one BNC, and two telephone jacks.
6 you may ask? Well, since ethernet only uses four of the eight wires in the cat5 cable, so you can send two connections down one cable (and out one wall jack), although you need a splitter cable (easy to make) if you want to get the second connection out of it of course
Then, all the ports are wired up via the walls to a central switchboard where you can use short pieces of cable to connect the network any way you like. It's brilliant
A hub built into a wall switch! That's amazing! At the rate things are going, someone is going to invent a network card that doesn't even NEED cables, and this thing will be obsolete! Maybe it could use RADIO WAVES!
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
People who are going to install ethernet switches will probably cable it themselves and put in a regular old switch, and not need this 'gee whiz' switch. Others will opt for home PNA or 802.11 solutions.
I don't see them selling a whole bunch of these. Other than the 'gee whiz' factor they aren't any more useful than a regular switch/hub.
AS a person who just bought a new house (Ok old house, but new to me... I never lived there before) running 2-cat5e,cat3,2-RG6 cables to each outlet plate (I.E. 2 locations to each room) is not difficult by any means. Anyone can go to home-depot and buy all the parts and tools needed (Note: dont waste your money on RG6Quad shield, it offer's you nothing) to completely wire your home, in 1 weekend ALONE. no other perosn helping to pull cable. My 6 foot long drill-bit has a hole in the tip so I can drill down, wander downstairs, tie the wire on and pull it back.
The trick is to plan your needs. the entertainment wall needs more ethernet than the bathroom (Kidding! you use wireless in there) and your office location needs even more than that.
It's cheaper than buying several of these "switches" and gives you better lan-topology in your home.
If I was retrofiting an existing-wired-house and didnt want to ttake the time to do it right? Sure! but I love using my rotozip to cut holes in walls and pulling wires through rafters.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Have you ever been reading an article and for no reason what so ever the server grinds to a halt? Pictures don't come up, "page can not be found" errors, and then it hits you like a ton of bricks, I bet this just made Slashdot. You click the link at the top of the your browser ( you do have a Slashdot link? Don't you?) and BAM there it is? Well that just happened to me and now I can't finish the article so suck it!
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Just a couple of points of information....
1) The list price is $140, not $399
2) It's not a hub. It's a switch. There's a difference.
Other than that, I somewhat agree with you. If you're working with a cabling architecture that you want to be flexible enough to be able to do other things than plain old ethernet, it's probably not a good choice for you.
But on the other hand, if you just need 4 network ports at a location, it could be very useful. It's one less box sitting around on or under your desk. And just because you have 4 devices that need network, doesn't mean they're computers. 1 computer, 1 networked printer, 1 wireless access point, and perhaps your cable modem/DSL/whatever. Yes, sure, there are other solutions to do this (like the Linksys cable/DSL router with a 4-port hub and a WAP that I have on my desk right now), but the point is that this is another option. And it might offer a certain kind of flexibility depending on the situation. I'd actually consider it to be more useful as a home device, rather than an office device. Though it would be nice if they had the ability to power it from behind the wall.
So it's no use to you. Doesn't mean that it's no use to everyone.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
It's actually a four-port switch. But in today's world, switches are rather ubiquitous, so it's no big deal.
There would be substantial cost savings when you have to pull cable. Rather than pulling four cables along, you pull just one. Also, at your floor drop, you only have one cable there and you will only be using one port. In your situation, your 4 Cat5 ports at the cubicle are using 4 Cat5 ports at your drop.
Call me crazy, but if you were going to be setting up a new area, this would be a pretty nifty item to have. You just pull one cable. Power over Ethernet (PoE) is not THAT expensive. You're talking in the ball park of $100 or so.
I see this product as something for new installations, not to replace what you've already got. If what's already there works, why change it? Going with these network jacks adds all kinds of room to grow. You get PoE and VoIP, as well as a four-port switch in every cubicle. That sounds pretty tasty, doesn't it?
I also don't know what you're talking about as far as using cable testing equipment and downtime. When's the last time you had a cable go bad? Or a switch? If all four of your devices go out - it's either the uplink from that jack (one cable) or the jack itself. Consider if you have four lines and one of those goes out. Is it the cable to the panel? Is it the cable from the panel to floor drop?
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Heck, I thought just about everyone had switches in the wall jacks for a long time now.
A whole wall panel for so little. What I would like is a glorified patch cable, with two bisexual ends. Find a socket that seems to have some working equipment connected to it, disconnect, plug your cable in, and reconnect what ever it was. Plug the other end in your laptop, and also there is a free end for the next guy and his laptop. Enough "intelligence" to handle 10/100Mbit conversions in all four directions, so it makes what ever old/new equipmen fit what ever old/new network, and to adapt to the needs of straight/crossed cabling if both ends turn out to be hubs or PCs. Preferably no power needed, eating a few electrons from the signal wires, or at least a built-in battery for the next zillion years... Price wouldn't matter, as long as most everyone could afford one... Is this really too much to ask?
In Murphy We Turst
The obvious solution is to run the power cable behind the wall -- so that you can install this device designed to avoid having to run cable behind the wall.
New Slashdot poll:
Paypal accidently dumped $400 into your account...
1) Four port wall mounted hub
2) ipod with all the hacked drivers
3) ten Oreilly books of your choice plus a free copy of Learning "Spelling" 2002
4) Limted edition Drivers License collection on CD-ROM or DVD
5) A night with Cowboy Neal
A lot of these replies talk about how this device is useless and they would rather just buy a regular 4-port switch. I see your point but I don't think 3Com cares if you buy this to wire your home. The article mentions working closely with cubicle manufacturers. If you work in a cube farm (and I do) you can immediately see how 3Com can make a lot of money from these.
Step1: 3Com gets cubicle companies to build these into cubes.
Step2: Cubicle companies build these switches into their cubes becuase they will have a nifty new feature to use in selling their cubes.
Step3: Large companies like mine buy new cubes for slightly higher price to get this nifty must have feature.
This seems clear to me....But my mind might be fuzzy from staring at this grey cube wall all day.
-- Find the Truth...
Some people here are saying things like "why not just do 2 or more runs in the first place?" To that I say that if you're wiring up 50 work areas and you have the premise wiring folks already on site, go for it; it's only slightly more expensive to have them run multiple cables.
But what happens when you have a single location that needs more Ethernet? That's the target market here. Instead of getting the premise wiring guys back on site to haul more cable, you just use this jack to fan-out more ports. Conventionally this is done using those little desktop mini-hubs, but putting it inside the wallbox instead of on the desk (or worse, on the floor beneath the desk) makes it neater and more difficult to break.
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If you would have read the article, its because this is easier to maintain than a stand alone switch. Running 4 lines isn't always the best idea because of cost of each line, as the article points out a lot of networking groups charge PER cable, not per pull.
This thing provides:
Little to no maintainence.
Reduces cost of cables pulled to office
Reduces clutter in ceiling
Relatively low cost for high quality manufacturer
My company, and every other company I've associated with over 25 employees don't have a lot of SMC or Netgear crap lying around. With experience as a network admin, I can say I'd much rather spend a few extra bucks on this than have one of those things sitting out where the user can fsck with it.
Companies will buy tons of these.
I wonder where Tom got the numbers for the cost comparison? He has cable pulling at $300+ for each run, I pay about $120. If his cable puller is charging him quad for four wires he needs a new cable puller. It ain't rocket science. He has upstream switch ports at $90ea! I'm paying $25 each. Then he has the mystical `gigabit switch port' row.
The maintanence/year row implies that the maintanence cost of the 3com device is zero. I would rather have something like "15% of cost"/year for it. I don't have many 4 year old hubs that haven't either died or got some blown ports. Lots of lightning around here. Its especially hard on hubs and NICs because of the ground surge differential on close strikes.
I see no indication of either the extra cost for powered ethernet devices or the electrical work to power the 3com devices.
The traditional wiring is costed for the worst case, where 4 ports are really active. Needing 4 ports available everywhere is not the same as needing 4 ports active everywhere. I routinely run four times the copper that I will need and activate ports as needed.
An even better comparison would have been to compare the 3com wall jack hub to a free standing hub. But then the 3com would not have looked so good.
It's a shame 3com didn't have these during the dotcom boom. They could have sold dumptruck loads of them. Now? I doubt it.
One item that I did not see addressed is whether or not it passes on the 802.3af Power Over Ethernet to the devices attached to the switch. Some of my customers use IP Phones, and this would be extra-sweet for them (the company won't authorize purchase of 802.3af power sources for the phones, but they might use these jacks when they move their offices...).
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Ahhh... I never thought I'd see the day when the RJ11 phone jack is the "Legacy Voice" jack!
This looks pretty sweet... I hope my next apartment comes pre-wired. =)
J.J.
At least one of the comparisons THG ran on the switches is completely useless.
Isn't it great that both of the switches can ping with 100 bytes of data at 1ms?
Wonder why it was always the same?
The ping included with MS OS's AFAIK can only report times equal or greater than 1ms. This is a great troubleshooter when you are pinging MIT from California but if you are pinging across just one switch, a 1ms time is horrible.
I get a 456us (.456ms) ping time, using 100 bytes, across an ancient 10Mbit HUB!!!
Of course I am using ping from iputils-20001110. This is not a MS bashing post, only a wish that THG would use meaningful tests sometimes.