An Organic Network Model

"All it takes is a little ingenuity", Bob Patton Jr. said one day in mid-1993. "We need to speed up network performance and continue to make room for new users with as little disruption as possible."

Patton's data highway had a traffic jam. With new users being added almost monthly, data throughput crawled. Each user needed access to accounting, sales and inventory file modules that resided on a central PC. And like any growing company, when one department slowed down, everybody suffered. So when Patton developed a line of 10Base-T products, they decided to use them to speed up applications in the company's engineering, manufacturing, and sales departments over a multi-protocol network.

In addition to using their own products, Patton wanted to use Ethernet because it had high throughput, reliable performance, and the ability to link with other topologies. The 10Base-T twisted pair Ethernet allowed easy expansion when adding network users!

In Patton's network, an SCO-Unix 486 running Performance Tech's Power Fusion acts as a file server to PCs and Macs, and as an application server to ASCII terminals. This allows the PCs and Macs to access the UNIX computer at network speeds rather than RS-232 speeds. ASCII Terminals in the purchasing, sales administration and shipping departments connect to the file server via a 16 port serial concentrator.

A Patton Model 2100 transceiver connects the AUI port of the file server's NIC to a Patton Model 2108. The Model 2108 is a stackable 10Base-T Hub that is equipped with one DB-15 AUI port and eight 10Base-T ports. An LED status indicator for each port on the Model 2108 shows either link integrity or carrier presence. The hub, in turn, connects via UTP to Model 2100 transceivers attached to PCs running Performance Technology's PowerLAN. This allowed 10 Mbps file access to PCs in Patton's accounting, engineering, manufacturing and technical support departments. It also gives them the ability to share files as non-dedicated servers on the network.

The 10Base-T hub also connects to a 2100 on a Gateway PC with a NetBIOS card, and an Ethertalk NIC for Ethernet connections to Macs in Sales, Accounting, and Administration.

By integrating their own products into a multiprotocol 10Base-T network, Patton successfully integrates AppleTalk, Ethernet, RS-232 in a network withthree unique types of networking software. This system gives Patton the ability to speed up performance and still make room for network expansion in each department of the company.