Wirt Atmar wrote:
>
> Toni asks:
>
> > One of my new customer has a Novell Network with 3COM 100 Base-T
> > Hubs.  I sold them HP3000 and HP/J3202A 10-Base/T Hub.  The
> > customer was thinking to keep everything seperate, but now they
> > want HP3000 to be part of their network.  Will 10Base-T work ok
> > connected to 100Base-T? (Will it slow their existing networks'
> > speed?)

> The trivial answer is: yes. Any new device on the LAN will add more
> packets to the traffic that's already there and that's bound to
> have some effect.  However, depending on how busy (or non-busy)
> the current packet traffic is, the effect of new packet streams
> could range from anywhere to neglible to substantial.

Let's back up a second for a technology check.  If you have a plain
10BaseT hub and a plain 100TX hub, they will *not* talk to each other
period.  If the 100TX hub is auto-negotiating, it will work, but will
slow down to the least common denominator and force the ports to 10Mb.
An internally bridged 10/100 autosensing hub is the minimum cost to
have a mix of 10TX and 100TX on the same box (don't be confused by
certain "10/100 hubs" like a Bay 250 - they do maintain two backplanes
at 10 and 100Mb, but you'll need an uplink for each speed - a good
example of a real bridging 10/100 autosensing hub is a cisco 1528).

Now if you get into a 10/100 switch, you're cooking with fire.  These
can freely intermix 10/100 ports while maintaining separate collision
domains per port.

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>