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.

Limited Usefulness

[dreamchaser]

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.

Re:Limited Usefulness

[trcooper]

It's not targetted at home users. It's for office use. Of course they won't sell a lot of these to home users, but companies will buy TONS of them.

Re:Now, if only...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the $300'ish that 3com plate costs you could get a wireless bridge [linksys.com] with built in 10/100 switch.

The device is nice, but if 3com thinks this alone is going to solve 3com's problems then they will be disappointed, lets see... something which is basically equivalent to a $20 faceplate and $50 switch and costs upwards of $300? Didn't 3com realise the insanity ended when the markets collapsed 18 months ago, are there any dotcoms flush with cash around to buy this type of product these days?

Shared bandwidth

[crotherm]

I guess no ones has noticed the obvious down side is that instead of having multiple dedicated 100Mb runs to a cube, now all the devices are going to share just one link.

Sure, not many apps will use all 100 Mb, but that is certainly something to think about.

--crotherm

Re:Ridiculous

[MikeyNg]

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?

Re:Limited Usefulness

[diesel_jackass]

from the article (pardon the formatting):

Cost To Run 4 Active Network Ports | Cost To Run 4 Active Network Port Using The NJ100

Wire Install (4 - Wires)...$467.32 | $335.65
Power Over Ethernet..........N / A | $70.00
Per Patch Panel Port........$19.50 | $4.88
3ft Patch Panel Cable........$8.44 | $2.11
Switch Port................$363.44 | $90.86
Gigabit Switch Port.........$51.85 | $12.96
Maintenance Per Year........$48.00 | $12.00
Total......................$958.56 | $528.46

anyways, considering its almost half the cost as installing 4 jacks, and about 400% easier...

how much would it cost for an access point and 4 802.11 NICs that can handle 100Mb?

Re:Limited Usefulness

[yesthatguy]

Actually, there are many places where it is somewhat useful. For example, I've been responsible for wiring the office building in which my company rents an office. A new tenant moved in, and wanted ethernet connectivity for 3 computers, but we had only run one drop to each office, and we weren't interested in running an additional 200' drop, especially with the 3" of workspace above the ceiling panels.

In order to set them up (and have them pay for only one connection), we had to run the live wire out of the wall, into one computer that's running NAT, then from a second NIC in that computer to a hub, then two cables from the hub back into the wall jack, then running over to the second jack (in an adjacent room of the same suite).

If we had had a hub/switch integrated into the walljack (and especially if it had NAT capability, *wink* *wink* 3com), this would have made the job one hell of a lot cleaner. I'd even consider replacing our current setup with this, if just to try the thing out.

Cubicle Killing

[slugfro]

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.

Not for new installations

[IGnatius T Foobar]

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.

Re:Ridiculous

[hyoo]

I think you are being somewhat extreme about this when you say that it is ridiculous and that its useless. First off, I dont think that 3Com expects this to be deployed at any decent sized company. It's probably a better idea for SOHO, or more likely for public areas (such as schools) where a switch/hub can get stolen, and running multiple cables across campus to the main switches is impractical. Shorter cables are cheaper.

Excuse me but if you have a need for four Cat-5 connections at one desk, I'm assuming four computers. That means that you have a mess to start with. What is a four port hub thrown into the mix?

One possibility could be... 1-port to your broadboard modem, 1-port to your printer, 1-port to your desktop, and 1-port to your laptop. It would be nice if college dorms had things like these installed in the rooms. Having devices like these available makes it a little more practical to do such a thing.

Cost comparison???

[victim]

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.

Re:Ridiculous

[Duke of URL]

>Why not run 4 cables in the first place? This cube farm was setup for finance initially and they would never need two ports, let alone four. And since the ceiling under you is finished plaster and the floor is wall to wall carpet now, you aren't going to be able to run a new line.

This is why you don't wire a room/building for it's current occupants when starting fresh. You make sure to meet needs of the current occupants but leave room for growth. Cable is cheap. We recently finished wiring an old building. During the process we wired a storage room. The building occupants said we didn't need to, but we insisted anyways. True to form, 3 months later they converted the storage space into office space and needed several connections.

Re:Wow

[RollingThunder]

Some of us feel that wireless security, even set up stringently, is just asking for it.

I'll keep with the wires, for now, thanks.

Some of us also have large investments already in place that use "the 20th century paradigm", this lets us easily add capacity where needed, without either turning the whole network into a mishmash, or adding Yet Another Security Hole.

Re:Wrong comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be the fact that in the core, you must also pay for 4x 10/100 switch ports. Say you paid $2400 for an enterprise-class 24-port 10/100 switch. Divide the cost by the number of ports and you get $100/port. Add the cost of the cable, the wall plate, etc. etc. , and that's where you're getting expensive.

The point with the pricing information is that if you only occupy a single 10/100port in the core ($100), and then the Network Jack ($140), you're at ~$240 instead of ~$400...

Re:Limited Usefulness

[SubtleNuance]

It's not targetted at home users. It's for office use.

Yes, but certainly for ignorant "small-office" types. Who is going to wire their office like this? Locking them into a 3Com scheme, not standard structured Cat5; One Port - One Drop.

This is going to lock you into their "Uplink Port" technology. Will everything behind the patch-cord become a mess of 3Com only connectors, cabling and termination blocks in the cabling closet? I find it difficult to believe that distributing "the switch" and using off-standard cable and terminations is going to *really* save you any money in cabling. Surely a 12port switch is cheaper than 3 of these units.

Further, regarding data-installs, straight from the article: "when the installation is billed to you, you are charged the same amout as if they had pulled all four cables separately, rather than all four at one time.


"... i dont know about you, but the guys who do the pulls in my building know *I'm* smarter than that. This is simply not the case, and I hope no one else puts up w/ that b.s.

Looks pretty nifty

[brett42]

I wish I had one of these last summer. I was helping my college's tech depatment wire some classrooms and I spent way too much time under desks with a punch-down tool.

Considering where it's located though, it would probably be cheaper and easier if it was just an unpowered hub instead of a switch. A cubicle with around four devices doesn't really need it's own switch.