[525] in Resnet-Forum
Re: Intelligent hubs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark Berman)
Tue Feb 28 17:49:49 1995
To: "John Bates, McGill Business Operations" <JOHNB@ubo.lan.mcgill.ca>
Cc: Resnet-forum@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 28 Feb 1995 15:04:28 EST."
<199502282008.PAA00662@sifon.CC.McGill.CA>
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 17:34:27 -0500
From: Mark Berman <Mark.I.Berman@williams.edu>
John,
I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing between "conventional
LANs" and "Intelligent hubs". We use RMON and telnet manageable
twisted pair hubs in our student residences which support port
privacy. The port privacy feature means that the hub learns the
hardware ethernet address of the device or devices attached to a
specific port and scrambles the data portion of any packet not
addressed to that device. This ensures that students can't use
"sniffing" software to learn other users passwords or other private
info. I guess you would call that an intelligent hub. We also route
our network and keep students on seperate subnets from faculty and
admin users for additional isolation. The hubs we are using are the
FMS2 hubs from 3COM. They are reasonably priced and have been quite
reliable for us.
Feel free to call me if you'd like to chat about it.
- Mark
--
*******************************************************************************
Mark Berman Mark.Berman@Williams.EDU
Director, Technical Services
Williams College, Ctr. for Computing
Williamstown, MA. USA 01267 (413) 597-2092
*******************************************************************************
--------- You said:
>We are contemplating wiring our residence halls, beginning with a
>pilot this summer. Our Computing Centre Director is proposing that
>we use intelligent hubs to link a NIC in a student's PC or Mac to the
>backbone, rather than building LANs and connecting through them.
>He believes that this will reduce costs, will reduce LAN and shared
>application software management problems (there won't be any) and
>improve security at the individual pillow.
>
>Most of the discussions I have seen (and understood) on resnet have
>had to do with conventional LAN solutions. Has anyone gone the
>intelligent hub route or have comments on it?
>
>Thanks for your input.
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>John Bates
>Director, Business Operations, McGill University
>3641 University, MONTREAL, Que CANADA
>
>tel: (514) 398-4015 fax: (514) 398-7170
--------- End of what you said
