From PC Week Labs

Clarinet's EthIR switch puts IR on the desktop

By Michael Surkan, PC Week Labs
April 5, 1999 12:18 AM ET

Infrared technology has become such a standard feature on notebooks and personal digital assistants over the past several years that it's hard to believe no products have appeared on the market that use these ports to link to corporate networks. Until now, that is. Clarinet Systems Inc.'s EthIR switch is the first device PC Week Labs has tested that allows IRDA (Infrared Data Association)-compliant Windows laptops and Windows CE devices to automatically link to networks without PCMCIA cards or messy driver installations. With the simplicity of a garden-variety Ethernet switch, the EthIR box allowed us to access servers and Internet gateways from Windows 95 laptops using proprietary IR modules attached to the switch using standard CAT-5 cabling. Despite the performance limitations of infrared (the maximum throughput on the EthIR LAN is 2M bps per port), our tests indicate that anyone doing normal e-mail and Internet browsing won't notice the difference from higher-speed Ethernet. Unfortunately, the story is not quite so rosy in Windows 98.

Microsoft did not include the infrared LAN software that came in Windows 95, so we could only make connections to the EthIR switch by manually setting the Direct Cable Connection option. Although this isn't terribly difficult, it's certainly far removed from the simplicity of IR LAN connectivity that is possible with Windows 95 clients. For many companies, however, the high price of the EthIR switch might make the brass wonder if networking simplicity is worth the same price as direct Ethernet links. Available since last month, the eight-port EthIR switch sells for $1,200, and the 16-port version lists for $2,240. The IR dongles, called EthIR Beams, are an additional $60 each. This works out to about $200 per port, which makes the cost of an Ethernet PCMCIA card and 10M-bps switch look competitive. SNMP support is an additional $200 per switch.

Configuring the EthIR LAN switch was simple enough with the Windows management software that was provided and the serial console port. We were able to assign an IP address to the switch and establish a pool of IP addresses to be automatically assigned to connecting IR devices. Other protocols, including NetBEUI and IPX, also worked seamlessly, with no configuration hassles. For all intents and purposes, the laptops were normal members on the LAN. We had only to ensure that the Windows IR port drivers had been properly installed. The IR dongles had convenient LED indicators that informed us of successful connections. The EthIR LAN switch works exactly as a regular switch does, so it most likely would be installed in racks with other switches and linked to RJ-45 ports in offices.

This could be ideal in places such as conference rooms, where people constantly move computers in and out. Half the ports in the device we tested were actually pass-through ports, allowing direct connections for each IR port to an Ethernet switch. It would have been nice if they had been labeled as such, because we spent a fair amount of time trying to understand why some IR dongles weren't working, when they were merely plugged into the wrong port. Although we didn't see noticeable performance differences when using laptop IR ports for networking, there are certainly cases where heavy-duty users will need a direct Ethernet link. In particular, older laptops can run IR links at no more than 115.2K bps, which will be unacceptably slow to many users. Most companies that buy this switch would be well-advised to also purchase the SNMP option, which supports Management Information Base II and allows the switch to be monitored from management platforms such as Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView.