3 Port Ethernet: New Three-Port Ethernet Switching Engine Drives Low-Cost, Cascadable Dual-Speed Hubs. System-Level IC Will Bring Performance Benefits of Dual-Speed Hubs to Price-Sensitive SOHO, Workgroup Markets

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, August 24, 1998

NeoParadigm Labs, Inc. (NPL) Monday announced the NP313 Three-Port 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet Switching Engine, which will make cascadable dual-speed hubs available to the price-sensitive SOHO and workgroup markets.

Architected for the simplest design and layout possible, this system-level IC enables hub vendors to build full-performance, cascadable dual-speed hubs at a total system cost of less than $10 per port. For the first time, the SOHO and workgroup markets will have an affordable solution for their network performance bottleneck problems.

The NP313 not only provides both 10/100 bridging in a dual-speed hub configuration but also provide traffic regulation between workgroups, making it easier to expand the network to meet future demands. The integrated, self-managed nature of the NP313 allows for a true simple plug and switch operation at under $10 per port system cost.

"We believe that there is a large, untapped market among business workgroups and SOHO markets for affordable, full-performance networking, driven by the Internet explosion," said Bettina Briz, NPL's vice president of marketing.

"The three-port NP313 gives this market exactly what it needs to break free of network performance restraints at a cost per port it can afford. And because we provide not only a highly integrated chip but also a complete reference system design, manufacturers can bring their products to market in only a few months."

"The SOHO hub and switch market represents a tremendous opportunity that still remains largely untapped," said Shannon Pleasant, industry analyst with Cahners In-Stat Group, a leading market research firm. "Traditional high end networking vendors have had a difficult time reaching a sweet spot for the SOHO customer. NeoParadigm Lab's NP313's ability to offer network connectivity at less than $10 per port represents a watershed for the SOHO market."

Using dual-speed hubs based on the NP313, end users can migrate from their existing 10Mbps LANs to 100Mbps LANs, integrate hybrid 10/100Mbps networks, bridge 10Mbps and 100Mbps networks, and expand their network easily via isolated cascading between hubs -- all at full network performance.

Until now, 10/100 hubs have had separate 10 Mbps and 100 Mpbs ports and have typically limited network performance to the lowest speed port on the segment. If there were both 100 Mbps and 10 Mbps traffic on a segment, the effective bandwidth of the segment was limited to 10 Mbps.

Because the NP313 has two separate buses, one running at 10 Mbps and one at 100 Mbps, it can carry all traffic at full wirespeed. Ports are connected to the appropriate bus, allowing an aggregate throughput of 100 10 Mbps. This means that hubs employing the NP313 can support 10 Mbps legacy systems while delivering full network performance to 100 Mbps systems. Three Ports Provide Full Performance

Today's two-port, dual-speed switches only provide bridging between 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps ports. As the network expands, the exponential growth of contentions on the same segment slows network performance. To avoid this problem, the overall network has to be partitioned into logical workgroups, each representing a segment on the network. A switching hub handles data transfer between the workgroups.

The three-port configuration of the NP313 allows for easy switching between the 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps ports, leaving the third port available for cascading between workgroups. Because the circuit has an automatic MAC address learning capability, it automatically isolates the traffic of 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps segments from each other, passing only those packets whose destination address is on the other segment.

This isolation means that the individual workgroups maintain the full data transfer performance between nodes on the segment as well as full connectivity to the extended network. Because the NP313 supports full-duplex and full 100Mbps wirerate among all three ports, it increases network bandwidth tremendously.

The NP313 Three-Port Switching Engine is part of NPL's family of Ethernet switches, which also includes the five-port NP315 and the eight-port NP318.

Mitch Yang, president and CEO of EtherWAN Systems, Inc. is a NeoParadigm Labs customer and he commented "This new three port Switching Engine helps us meet two goals. One, we can build a dual speed switching hub for the lowest cost per port since it's $10 per hub, and two, we're able to support legacy systems without slowing down newer systems to 10Mbps performance. Our end users like the ease with which they can upgrade to a dual speed switching hub without taking a performance hit." Fully Featured NP313

The NP313 offers a number of features that help optimize network and switch performance.

* The circuit's three self-managed, full-featured ports automatically sense half-duplex and full-duplex mode.

* The NP313 can intelligently manage three operation modes, including store-and-forward mode. The cut-through mode has a very short latency of 3 microseconds, the fastest on the market, for switching for client-server type traffic. The safe cut-through mode blocks "runt" packets that are smaller than the minimum packet size allowed by the LAN.