On 11.10.2013 2:35, Mark Wickens wrote: On 10/10/2013 17:50, Kari Uusim ki wrote: On 10.10.2013 18:19, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote: On Oct 10, 2013, at 10:35 AM, Brian Hechinger <wonko at 4amlunch.net<mailto:wonko at 4amlunch.net>> wrote: On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 02:32:26PM +0000, Paul_Koning at Dell.com<mailto:Paul_Koning at Dell.com> wrote: ... Then there is the Gigaswitch, a large modular chassis with lots of line cards, some FDDI, some Ethernet, possibly some with other stuff I don't remember. I think this is the one I had. Big modular thing. Maybe (and going by really fuzzy memory here) 8U high? I was going to say "that sounds right" based on my memory of seeing one gathering dust around here. But the picture here: http://www.global-itcorp.com/products/digital-dec/networking/gigaswitch/ shows a much taller enclosure, half line card space and half power supply. Each section does look like 8U or so. Some searching turns up refurbished Gigaswitch modules. Some are pretty cheap, but it looks like those are ATM ones, the FDDI ones I see quoted are more expensive. Perhaps because FDDI was fairly successful at least for a short time, while ATM (as a LAN) was an utter failure. paul . Quite so, the Gigaswitch FDDI is large. The measurements are: 35.25" x 19.95" x 19.50" and the weight is 192lbs. The power consuption is about 1000W depending on the amount of line cards. There are FDDI fiber and twisted pair line cards and 100BaseT line cards. Many operators used to have those at the time and the later ATM versions as well. Kari This sounds like it might be the right solution for me? http://www.pyramiddec.com/shop/FDDI-to-Fast-Ethernet-Gateway.asp?id=dvnfx-mx VNswitch900FX, FDDI/FE swt 1 FDDI and 2 FE port switch. Yes, that would be the one when converting between FDDI and 100BaseT Ethernet. The best effort it can produce is about what 100BaseT can, because it is the lowest common nominator. FDDI performs better due to the larger packet size (which is usable only between FDDI nodes) and the lower overhead. Btw. Many of the FDDI principles was used when developing FibreChannel. Kari