Nodoze,
You claim that LanMaker has an
edge in price, performance and
modularity/expandability over other networking vendors offerings. That is
very strange since the LanMaker's cost per port is
significantly higher than any of the major and minor players.
10/100 (the preferred port configuration) port density
is very low as well as very expensive.
Now if
you compare the LanMaker Chassis to the Catalyst
Chassis or the Xylan Chassis you will find very similar
pricing per port; however, you do not get anywhere near
the performance or flexibility. The LanMaker does not
function at Layer 3 today (they have said something about
a field upgradeable backbone module), nor does it
offer ATM or Gigabit uplinks. The products from Cisco,
Bay, 3Com and Xylan all support Layer 3, Gigabit,
Trunking, VLANs Q&P, ATM and other options today. So to
really get a comparable product you need to look at
something from NBase which is 30% of the cost of the
LanMaker or one of the standalone Bay, Cisco, 3Com 10/100
switches.
LanMaker is really a low end product with
a high end price. Long time LanOptics customers
will choose it because they like dealing with
LanOptics. New customers would be foolish to purchase the
product since they could get better performing products
for the same cost or less.
Marketing can help
any product. Look at Cisco, they have always had a
slightly retarded product in every catagory but their
sales and marketing machine pull them through with the
rest of the really excellent products. LanOptics lacks
a pull through product not to mention the sales or
marketing force to sell it.