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.

Re:Only four ports?

[the_2nd_coming]

but that is only good for 10/100.....1000baset uses all 8 wires.

neat as a retrofit item

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Ridiculous

[signe]

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

Re:say that again?

[trcooper]

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.

Re:Number of switches in a network constraint

[Versa]

No, there is a limit on the number of hubs you can have, not switches. The 5-4-3 rule is what you are thinking of, 5 network segments, 4 repeaters and only three occupied segments, but that only is in reference to hubs, not switches.

Its got to do with the collision domain and the total time it takes to transmit something and the total time it takes to reach its destination.

Re:Only four ports?

[darkwiz]

...And REALLY not a good idea for reliable 100

No... It is just fine. I have a number of runs where I use two connections, also ones where I have the ethernet and telephone using the same wire, and there is no significant difference in performance. This was the INTENDED purpose of using 8 wire configuration [one ethernet+one line POTS]. In fact, you'll notice that ethernet uses wires 1,2,3,6? If you wire up the center wires correctly, you should be able to plug a standard 6 conductor phone in the RJ45 [a 4 conductor connection will fit, but may jiggle], and the middle two wires [4,5] will work just fine. Plus if some moron plugs in a phone to the wrong jack it won't harm the ethernet.

Crosstalk in decent [Cat 5 and higher] cable is basically a non-issue. Since all the pairs are twisted, they have very good immunity to inductive interference [take a e-mag course]. Unless you do something stupid, like wrap it around your Tesla coil or something, it probably won't be a problem.

The only reasonable argument against using two connections over one wire is if one wire goes bad [a kink or break in the line], you can switch to another pair.

Silly ping times

[jiminim]

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.