Affordable 100BaseTX Networking

Networking for Dummies

What companies come to mind when someone asks you about networking products? Thanks to incredibly expensive advertising/branding efforts, you immediately think of 3Com, Intel, and Cisco. There's no question that these companies make great products, but what about the smaller manufacturers with smaller advertising budgets?

There are a handful of networking companies such as D-Link and Linksys that offer high quality products at prices that put the big brand names to shame. These lesser known companies even have software drivers and customer support levels that equal or surpass those offered by the big boys.

We've managed to get our grubby little hands on D-link's DFE-905 Network Kit. The DFE-905 kit looks like a great networking starter kit for beginners, and provides everything you need to network together 2 computers. It includes a 4 port 10/100Mbps DFE-904 hub, 2 10/100Mbps DFE-530TX PCI network cards, two 20' RJ45 cables, various user manuals, and a nifty setup CD-ROM with shareware versions of Blizzard's Diablo and WarCraft2.