LANart announces the SegWay port switch, breaking the price performance barriers of high-end Ethernet switches and VLAN solutions; Delivers high performance, innovative management and industry's best capital cost savings

Business Wire, Sept 5, 1995

NEEDHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 5, 1995--LANart today announced the SegWay port switch, delivering breakthrough price/performance, unmatched traffic management capabilities in switched and virtual LAN (VLAN) environments, and dramatic reductions in cost of network ownership.

Featuring an open platform that seamlessly integrates into existing network environments, SegWay provides a simple migration path from legacy to switched and VLAN networking. SegWay further preserves a customer's freedom of choice in the selection of switching and VLAN equipment because it works with all vendor architectures.

"Although user interest in high-end Ethernet switches and VLANs is growing, these technologies are very expensive, posing a significant deterrent to their widespread adoption," said Dr. Yoseph L. Linde, founder and president of LANart. "As a result, quick-fix, low-end Ethernet switches have emerged on the market; however, these solutions lack the intelligence to perform key network functions, such as containment of broadcasts for efficient use of bandwidth and support for virtual networking. We are pleased to announce today the first product that breaks through those cost barriers, while delivering value-added switching and VLAN functionality, and superior traffic control capabilities priced as low as one third the cost of alternative networks."

SegWay is a strategic business tool for companies seeking to relieve problems caused by:

o the exploding growth in the number of network users, o onslaught of more sophisticated, bandwidth-intensive applications, o ineffective, outmoded management tools for next-generation

workplace dynamics, o shrinking, less-experienced management staff resulting from

downsizing, and o soaring capital equipment and network administration costs.

Through a combination of LAN-art developed ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) technology and a scalable, high-performance port-switching architecture that allows users to optimally amortize the expense of high-end LAN switching and VLAN devices, SegWay brings to market a comprehensive solution that addresses users' key network performance, migration and cost concerns.

The Premise of SegWay

Although bandwidth relief is the primary reason for purchasing a LAN switch, providing a dedicated switch port to each individual user is unnecessary and expensive as tests show 80 percent of mainstream users do not require 10 Mbps of bandwidth to the desktop. Recognizing the cost/capacity trade off facing network managers today, LANart developed SegWay to allow network managers to effectively adjust costs proportionally to the different bandwidth needs of diverse network users. With SegWay, network managers can easily balance the network load, thereby making more efficient use of network capacity, and commensurably reducing costs.

Designed as a 24-port stackable system that is expandable up to 120 ports, Segway enables network managers to easily and cost effectively expand network capacity based on evolving network requirements. SegWay supports an aggregate capacity of 80 Mbps through eight 10 Mbps Ethernet segments.

Delivering High-end Switching and VLAN Functions at a Breakthrough Price Point

SegWay delivers high-end switching and VLAN functionality at the lowest cost per port in the industry, typically by a factor of at least two. SegWay's scalable, distributed network design also provides significantly improved performance while dramatically reducing capital equipment expenses.

Deployed between an Ethernet switch or VLAN device and the desktop, SegWay allows network managers to install fewer, but higher end switches to deliver their full capacity to the desktop. Improved network performance and cost efficiency is gained using SegWay to share switch ports among groups of users, without any perceptible difference in performance. Intelligent sharing of switch ports ensures optimal utilization of bandwidth.

This allows network managers to move beyond the limitations of low-end switches and provides advanced VLAN functions, such as the elimination of unnecessary broadcasts that sap network throughput, and the support of higher-level routing functions. SegWay allows the per-user price of Ethernet switch port to decrease dramatically, making this technology available to many more workgroups in the organization. Combined with the industry's lowest port cost, SegWay delivers advanced switching and VLAN functions at a breakthrough price point.

Unmatched Traffic Control Capabilities

To address the critical need facing network managers of how to handle changing traffic patterns within their network, SegWay provides a fast and easy means to balance the network load from a single, centrally located management console. SegWay's dynamic traffic control capabilities facilitate network configuration and deliver deterministic, high-performance networking.

Unique to SegWay's switching and traffic control functionality is a microsegmentation feature that allows network managers to configure and move individuals within and between workgroups, regardless of where they are physically attached to the network. The ability to reassign users instantaneously dramatically reduces time and costs associated with network moves, adds and changes and significantly impacts network throughput. This capability allows network managers to ensure that each of the network segments is used efficiently, providing maximum throughput and minimal delay to the users assigned to it.