Allied Telesyn International last week unveiled two Gigabit network adapters for servers or workstations, aimed at enterprises looking to take advantage of falling prices in Gigabit Ethernet equipment.

The new network interface cards (NIC), with copper and fiber optic interfaces, could be used to connect servers or high-powered workstations to a network at Gigabit, or near-gigabit speeds, depending on the types of cabling, switches and server and PC hardware used.

At US$200 for the copper-based AT-2930T and $500 for the fiber-based AT-2930SX, the cards are priced in the same neighborhood as competing products from 3Com Corp., Asanté Technologies Inc., Intel Corp. and SysKonnect GmbH. They are also cheaper than Allied's previous Gigabit adapters, which cost between $600 and $1,200 for copper or fiber versions.

Allied's 1000Base-SX and 1000Base-T server adapters, can respectively send Gigabit-speed traffic over 550 meters of single mode fiber or 330 feet over Category 5 or 6 copper cabling.

Both PCI-based NICs support features such as 802.1Q virtual LAN tagging for identifying 64 VLAN segments in a network. The NICs also can sense slower 10M and 100M bit/sec Ethernet connections.

Research firm IDC expects the adoption of Gigabit Ethernet to continue to rise as it foresees a 43 percent price drop for 1000M bit/sec NICs over the next 3 years.

The AT-2930T and AT 2930SX are available now.