You forgot to mention, IT'S A BELKIN! (Belkin 8-Port Network Switch (10/100Mbps))

Name: grahamt

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Product:	Belkin 8-Port Network Switch (10/100Mbps)
Date:	01/04/03 (479 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast, Inexpensive

Disadvantages: Still needs cables

Yeh, well, the Dooyoo people forgot to add an important bit of info, the manufacturer! Oh well, on with the review!

First, a little bit of background that might help to shed some light on the whole subject of networks. If you have heard about them but don't know very much about them, why you might like to consider installing one in your home. Bear with me on this. Otherwise, jump to the end for the Product Review.

Over the years my family and I have accumulated many computers. I progressed from using PCs in my work to having my company supply laptops to their staff for their jobs.

My son was an early user of the Amiga (of blessed memory) although both of those then revolutionary machines (A500 and A1200) are these days consigned to the back of a cupboard (any offers?). Now, Intel and Microsoft (shame but, watch out Bill, Linux is a bigger threat than you believe) reign supreme.

My wife always claimed she needed a computer too so three years ago I got her a laptop from Tescos (!), which still gets occasional use. My daughter is just completing a Photographic Art degree at the University of Wales. She was diagnosed Dyslexic when she started her course and was supplied with computer equipment (Apple Mac G4) to assist her with her work by the local council.

As time goes by and technology progresses, old machines become out-of-date (viz. the Amiga) and get replaced or upgraded. The old machines start to accumulate and you wonder what to do with them. Do they have any residual value? Would anyone want them? Should you just throw them away?

Now, I'm loath to throw anything away that still works. Yes, they still work. They may be a bit slow, they may not have a lot of memory, the hard drives may be a bit small, they may only run Windows98, but they still work.

If you have a desktop machine then upgrading is an option. If you have a laptop you're options are much restricted. Processo
r upgrades are usually not possible. Extra memory is possible, especially with very competitive offerings from such suppliers as Crucial (http://www.crucial.com/uk/index.asp).

Extra storage can be achieved even if it's by way of an extra external drive such as from Freecom (http://www.freecom.com/), which connect either via PCMCIA, USB or Firewire, although the latter is unlikely to be present on older machines and USB is likely to only to be the much slower Rel 1.0 version (the new Rel 2.0 version is 10 time faster).

So extra life can be squeezed out of old machines but, in the end, slow processor speeds are likely to restrict their use. So, what to do with them?

My son is into interactive gaming. Many is the time we have found him squashed into his bedroom surrounded by his friends and their own machines (yes, I know, sad isn't?). I wondered initially why they all had to come round to our house simply to use their computers, that is until I noticed a wire running round the room from machine to machine.

They were networked! Admittedly a very simple network in those days. Called 10base2, it was just coaxial cable, similar to the one that feeds the signal to your TV, connecting the network card in each machine to the next via a T-piece bayonet connector, in an open-ended daisy-chain. Very simple, very cheap.

However, there are problems. The more machines you plug in to the network, the slower it goes. I won't try to explain why but it's all to do with data bumping into other data as it flows over the network. Also, there is a maximum distance that this type of network can travel. In most home situations however, this is unlikely to be a problem.

So, for most home use, this is quite good enough. Problem is, getting hold of the bits. 10base2 is not flavour-of-the-month these days. My son got his from scrap equipment that was going to be thrown away at the place where he had a tempo

rary job. You may not be so lucky.

So, what's the alternative?

Most modern networks use a wiring system called 10baseT or 100baseT. How does this differ? Well, instead of using coaxial this uses a multi-wire cable that looks a bit like a fat telephone cable. Like telephone cable, the wires have plastic plugs (not the BT plugs but special ones called RJ45) on each end, with a little spigot (which often breaks off!) to keep it inserted in the socket to which it is connected.

Wiring computers together using this system needs extra equipment. They can't simply be daisy-chained together like the 10base2 system. They have to be connected in a Star pattern, with all of the wires from all of the machines being plugged into a "concentrator" called a Hub or a Switch. (You knew we would get there in the end didn't you!).

The Hub or Switch enables the data to flow from any machine to any machine. In effect it still performs the daisy-chain connection but it does it internally through the design of its circuits. It also handles other functions to do with making sure the data flows securely, but we don't need to know about that here.

There is another modern approach and that uses wireless connections between machines. In principal it is exactly the same, it just uses wireless signals rather than cables. However, wireless is a whole subject in it?s own right and not relevant to the product concerned here. Besides, it can also be a lot more expensive. But, if you don't like the idea of cables running round you house, this could be the solution for you.

So, we have the technology! We can connect machines together. Why would we want to do this and what has this got to do with old machines?

One thing I have noticed over the years is how much data accumulates on our machines. Much of it is probably redundant; we just haven't got around to getting rid of it. However, so
me of
it is probably vital. If you lost your machine tomorrow (it happened to me; mine was stolen out of my car), could you do without the data you lost, let alone the machine?

So, use No. 1. Data backup. Let's plug into the network one of these old machines, with a large extra hard drive attached to it. Now we can use this machine (File Server) to rapidly backup data over the network. Every now and then, plug your "every day" machine into the network and copy the data you must keep, over to the old machine. Now, even if you lose your machine, you haven't lost the data.

Use No. 2. Everyone needs to print things from time to time. In our house, everyone wants access to a printer at some time or another. If everyone doesn't have their own then there is a fight over who gets to use it next. So, plug an old machine into the network and make the printer available (Print Server) to everyone at the same time! Prints sent to the machine will be queued up and printed in turn. Problem solved!

Use No. 3. People sometimes want to scan newspaper articles or photos so as to email them to friends. Does everyone have or need to have their own scanner? No. Plug an old machine into the network and enable anyone to scan in information as and when they want.

Use No. 4. Everyone wants to use the Internet at the same time. Do you have multiple phone lines? Do you want them all tied up for hours by people surfing the Net? Make one machine on the network the Internet connection. Dial out from that machine and let all the others access the Internet via this machine. If you have Windows2000 or WindowsMe or higher, the software (Internet Connection Sharing) comes included. If nor, download some Proxy Server software. AnalogX do a good one (http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/ proxy.htm).

Now, these could all be the same machine or they could be different machines. Whatever is the cas
e, for this sort of use, old machines that would be otherwise redundant, are ideal. I have two such set up on our network, one as a File Server and Print Server and the other having the scanner. Performance is more than adequate.

So, now we have a use (there will be plenty of others as well), how best to set this up?

Earlier I talked about Hubs and Switches. What's the difference? Well, a Hub is very simple (and very cheap). It takes data from one machine and connects it to another. Surely that's what we want to do isn't it? Well, yes it is and in most circumstances this is more than adequate. However there is one restriction with a Hub. It can only do this with two machines at a time.

In our house, when everyone's on the network, we have eight machines connected. So, two machines can hog the Hub and leave the others twiddling their thumbs. This is especially a problem if one machine is transferring a lot of data over the network.

Actually, in practice it isn't quite as bad as it sounds but, after a certain point, the network does get very noticeably slower.

Enter the Switch.

The Switch is a Hub with intelligence. A Switch can connect multiple machines together at the same time and keep the data flowing between each without significant impact on other users. Of course, if everyone is trying to connect to the same machine, this isn't going to be an enormous help. Nevertheless, a Switch can show performance improvements in many situations.

Switches cost more than Hubs but that price differential is coming down rapidly. For the extra cost it's probably worth buying a Switch rather than a Hub, even for general use.

I also mentioned 10baseT and 100baseT. What's the difference? Well, the first number refers to the speed with which data flows over the network. As you may have gathered, 100baseT runs 10 times (more or less) faster than 10baseT. If you
are shift
ing lots of data then 100baseT will tie up your network (all other things being equal) far less than 10baseT.

So, now you've been introduced to the wacky world of networks, what about this Belkin Switch I've been carefully avoiding so far?

Good point. Here, those who skipped all that stuff above will have joined us for the nitty-gritty.

On our network we had an old Netgear Hub that my son had bought some time ago, mainly because it was VERY cheap and he had little money. It did a good enough job but had limited ports (5) and was only 10baseT compatible. When he went to live and work in Manchester he took the Hub with him.

So we had a network but without anything to connect one machine to another; just a bunch of wires really; no use to man nor beast.

Having a look at what was available I decided that I would get a Switch not a Hub and 100baseT not 10baseT. There really wasn't any point in going for less with the minimal difference in price. As all the cables were in place, wireless was unnecessary.

There is a lot of choice. Belkin and Netgear dominate the bottom end of the market with many others following up behind. You can spend a LOT on these boxes. Commercial suppliers for business use, trade on the quality of the components they use and the guarantee to deliver performance right at the top of the range. For home use this is just OTT.

The Belkin 8-port 10/100 Switch comes in right at the bottom of the price range at a very reasonable £40 or thereabouts, depending where you get it. I got mine from Misco. It's a little different in that it stands upright rather than sitting flat on the surface, which was a good feature from my point of view, having restricted space for it.

The cables plug into the back, as does the power supply, a transformer plug, and the front displays a series of lights to indicate which ports are connected and which are actuall
y transferring
data.

The 10/100 designation means that it will automatically detect the connection on each machine and will run at either 10mbps (millions of "bits" [of data] per second) or 100 mbps according to the capabilities of the machine.

So, what's it like to use? Well, it does the job. There is a certain amount of light that bleeds between the displays on the front so it can be a bit of a problem trying to work out which ports are doing what but this isn't a big issue. It seems to transfer data quickly although I don't have a monitor to check that it really does deliver the maximum that should be possible.

I use one machine on the network as a gateway to the Internet for all other machines on the network. I use the AnalogX Proxy Server software for this as the machine in question is only running Windows98. I also use Jon Grieve's Dial-up Networking Monitor (http://jongrieve.net/dunmon/) to monitor my connection via my ISP (ntl: - yes, I know they're crap but they are the only cable supplier in our area and BT Broadband doesn't reach as far as my house).

I have noticed that when transferring data between machines, say on an upload to an Internet website, the data transfer rate fluctuates wildly according to the monitor. I can't say that this is down to the Switch. It could be the machines themselves. In the end though, it's going to be the dial-up connection that is going to determine how fast the data flows, not the network.

So, worth the money? Yes, I think so. It does the job. It seems reliable. It's cheap enough. It's future-proof (as much as anything is that is). I'm sure you will find likewise.

Summary: