Get your staff on the Web

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1998 by David Harvey

                    NetCenter 8-Port Hub and
NETWORKING          Internet Station Fair 1/2

Requirements        WIN 95/WIN NT/MAC 10BaseT Ethernet
                    adapter cards and cables, PC Card
                    and/or serial modem (analog or ISDN)
                    for Internet connection, PC
                    Card and/or serial modem or fax/modem
                    (for shared dial-out), Internet
                    account with ISP
List Price          $88 for hub, $540 for station
                    (READER SERVICE 120)
Manufacturer        Dayna Communications, 801-269-7200,
                    800-443-2962, www.dyna.com

RATINGS

   The one-to-four-star ratings     Excellent
      are based on performance,     ****
       features, setup, ease of     Good
                                    ***
learning and use, availability,     Fair
             warranty, support,     **
      documentation, and price.     Poor
                                    *

So you need to network your office as well as set up your employees with Internet access. Expensive proposition, right? Which should you budget for first? The NetCenter 8-Port Hub and Internet Station components of Dayna Communications's new NetCenter line let you do both, but it's not cheap.

Everything was present and accounted for--two PC Card slots, one serial and one 10BaseT port, and software to enable both modem sharing and Internet protocol (IP) routing. The NetCenter lets you attach up to three modems (via PC Card and serial interfaces) and in turn use one of those modems for shared Internet access and the other two as shared dial-out modems.

Getting on the Net once you've got the modem is as easy as it gets. Using the Web-based setup wizard, all we had to do was select our ISDN modem and enter our account and ISDN information. Because the Internet Station serves as a DHCP (domain host configuration protocol) server, you don't have to worry about configuring IP addresses. Even better, Dayna's InstantIP feature allows you to share a single-user Internet account among every user on the network.

Modem sharing is dial-out only--fine for those who need only to send, but if you currently receive faxes via modem, this solution won't work. Company logic is that the modemless approach allows you to easily leverage existing hardware and take advantage of upgrades without having to buy a new Internet Station. The problem is that when it comes to the Internet, the strategy dissolves. Support more than two users and you'll want ISDN. Add a serial ISDN modem ($200 to $300) and you lose the compact design; stay slim with a PC Card and you'll spend $350 to $400. Add this to the $540 price tag of the Internet Station and you approach the price of an ISDN router. Though not the most scalable solution, the NetCenter can be a good first step.