>This can bite back. There is usually a reason why something has the lowest
>price. Sometimes that reason is OK, or at least something you can live with.
>I buy the $10-15 keyboards so that when my kids spill a drink in them, it's
>merely annoying, since I usually already bought a spare on sale for $10.
>
>OTOH, sometimes cheap is cheap. Can this application be down while someone
>tries to figure out why the spare won't work, or buys and configures a
>replacement? Will someone ensure that they both work? Will they be
>periodically switched to check this? Can you use two identical hubs, so that
>there are, one hopes, no differences between the two?
>
>----------
>From:  [log in to unmask]
>Sent:  Monday, February 24, 1997 12:27 PM
>To:    [log in to unmask]
>Subject:       [HP3000-L] Ethernet hubs
>
>> We need to buy an ethernet hub to keep on hand as a backup for use
>> on an P3000.  We want an unmanaged one.  Is there any reason not
>> to get the cheapest one we can find?
>
>Not that I know of.  We use a couple of little Linksys 8 port hubs
>here that cost something like $129.00 at Fry's.  They also have a
>BNC connector to hook them to a thinlan network.  We've used two
>of them as a bridge between two thinlan segments.  They are quite
>good at automatically partitioning off any port (10-base-T or
>thinlan) that malfunctions, with a red light indicating the bad
>port.  You can do a lot of cool things with a couple of cheap hubs.
>
>G.
>
>
>