Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Digi AccelePort Xp Digi is well known for its multiport
cards. The AccelePort Xp is the
latest in a long line of fast, easy-to-use multiports. Succeeding several other AccelePort models, the Xp provides
anywhere from two to sixteen ports on a small PCI card.
The high-speed capabilities of previous cards has been improved upon with
the AccelePort Xp by the addition of an 80MHz RISC processor on the expansion
card, making it potentially the fastest multiport card available today (we
couldn’t find any that competed with all 16 ports running at 920kbps
biderectionally). The market for multiport cards has
dwindled enormously from the earlier UNIX-server days, but these cards are still
in demand for retail operations such as point-of-sale device controllers, remote
access servers, and data collection from dumb terminals.
With the AccelePort Xp’s ports all capable of 921.6kbps bidirectionally,
the AccelePort Xp can provide almost any device with more than enough bandwidth.
Digi makes the AccelePort Xp in two-port, four-port, eight-port and sixteen-port
versions. The card itself is purchased separately, with break-out
cables at additional cost. The
advantage to this approach is that the breakout cables can be chosen to suit the
application. Digi offers breakout
cables with DB-9, DB-25 and RJ-45 connectors on a fan-out cable (affectionately
known as octopus cables to UNIX veterans), breakout boxes (much neater for
cabling), or in a rack-mount chassis (for server rooms). All the cables connect
to the card with a standard 68-pin SCSI cable, although there is no SCSI support
on the card. Several operating systems are supported by the AccelePort Xp,
including SCO OpenServer and UnixWare, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, as well as
Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Novell NetWare. We were supplied both the sixteen port
version of AccelePort Xp and an eight-port along with several cables.
The small 16-port PCI card has two connectors on the back panel allowing
eight-port cables of two different types to be used, while the 8-port card is
smaller and has a single connector on the backpanel.
The cards themselves are clean and contain surface-mounted components
with no bare wiring. Both install easily enough, and the accompanying CD-ROM has
the software drivers for the supported operating systems.
A nice touch is a complete manual with the card: we much prefer physical
documentation to CD-ROM based documents! We
were supplied with two eight-port breakout boxes with DB25s, and a cable octopus
with DB25s. We could mix and match
the cables on either of the cards with no problem. Total installation and
configuration time on our RedHat server was ten minutes. Digi has a new software bundle
accompanying the AccelePort Xp which consists of the PortAssist Manager.
It’s Web based allowing it to run from any machine on the network.
Remote diagnostics were launched on the AccelePort Xp even across a VPN from
another state, a handy feature for managing remote offices. We managed our
Linux-based AccelePort Xp setups from both Linux and Windows machines with equal
effectiveness. To test the AccelePort Xp, we loaded up
the 16-port card with connections to a rack of workstations, connecting through
serial ports. We forced the ports
to faster and faster speed, using a script to handle file transfer and Web
server requests through the AccelePort Xp.
While Digi claims a bidrectional speed capability of 921.6kbps, we
couldn’t force sustained connections from our clients above about 600kbps.
This is not a limitation of the Digi cards, but with the nature of our
rack of workstations! Connecting a single serial port to a test workbench, we did
manage bi-directional speeds of 875kbps, at which point our measuring equipment
became unreliable. In real world
terms, the AccelePort Xp will provide more speed then most people will need. To test Remote Access Server
capabilities, we hooked up a bank of eight ISDN models running at 128kbps into a
PBX (looping back to other ports). We
used all eight modems at full speed with no problem, all with complete modem
control and hardware handshaking (better than software handshaking).
We did connect two T1 adapters to the card in place of two ISDN modems,
and again looped them back to each other, and measured 760kbps transfers through
the modems. A neat feature of the AccelePort Xp is a
built-in surge protector. Although
it’s unlikely anyone would power a server without a UPS, modem lines and other
terminal devices are often left to the forces of nature.
By putting surge protection on the card, Digi protects the server.
The AccelePort Xp cards we tested are excellent multiport cards, and Digi
has done a lot to provide flexibility and operating support. You can’t go wrong with any of these cards. Digi Summary: Blazingly fast multiport card with many port and cabling options. Excellent administration software and choice of operating system support. |
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Send mail to
tparker@tpci.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
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