ANTenna Blog -- Networking & Communications

The newest family of switches from networking equipment provider AdTran offers smaller and growing businesses a rich feature set at an accessible price point.

Unless it's your job to maintain the network infrastructure at your company, you don't spend much time thinking about switches -- that is until something goes awry and your productivity grinds to a halt. Reliability and ease-of-use are the lures of the 6 new switches in AdTran's NetVanta lineup that will appeal to businesses adding, replacing, or upgrading networking equipment.

The Huntsville, AL company hopes the accessible Web GUI, AdTran's in-house tech support, and a lifetime warranty will attract smaller businesses that are just starting to build their networking infrastructure or have made due with consumer-grade networking equipment, according to AdTran product manager Joe McClain, who pointed to the "business class features with ease of use accessible to SMB."

The features available with the new switches include automated power management for PoE, higher density (48 ports in PoE and non-PoE), central Wi-Fi access controller (no dedicated WLAN controller), higher-bandwidth Gigabit to the desktop, and cable diagnostics.

Price points for the 6 NetVanta switches:

• NetVanta 1534 PoE $2,895


• NetVanta 1534 $1,695


• NetVanta 1238 PoE $2,195


• NetVanta 1238 $995


• NetVanta 1234 PoE $1,445


• NetVanta1234 $595