The S51, the first member of a new family of Multiservice Access Cards Eicon will be introducing over the next year, provides both a serial port for WAN connection over switched or leased lines, and a dial-up ISDN port that can be used for concurrent access or as an on-demand backup to the primary leased line. The S51 is unique in supporting a wide array of protocols -- frame relay, X.25, HDLC, PPP and SDLC as well as SNA/APPN, IP, IPX, AppleTalk and OSI/Transport -- over both serial and dial-up technologies on the same interface card.

The S51 can be used in conjunction with any of Eicon's remote SNA communication and router software products to provide connectivity for a variety of server environments, including UNIX, Windows NT, DOS, OS/2 and NetWare.

Jeff Paine, Eicon vice president of marketing for the Americas, said, "The S51 offers the unprecedented flexibility to protect virtually any investment a user has made in communication technology. One user starting out with ISDN may want to move to frame relay as frame relay tariffs drop or daily utilization of the ISDN link rises to the point where it is more expensive than a dedicated connection. The S51 can also send frame relay data across the card's ISDN link, making it ideal for giving users ISDN access to a public or private frame relay data network. The S51 can also be used as a link between a TCP/IP or Novell LAN and a legacy SNA network. Just one card supports all these services, and the user can activate any of them via a simple graphical interface."

The S51's High Speed Interface (HSI) serial port supports V.24, V.35 and X.21 interfaces for high-speed connection to WAN services.

The card's secondary port provides a single ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) with two 64-Kbps B channels and 1 D channel. Unlike many competitive ISDN adapters that provide only reduced-bandwidth asynchronous COM port emulation, the S51 ISDN port supports synchronous-layer protocols at full ISDN channel speeds. Each B channel can be configured independently to support the same range of protocols as the HSI port. In addition, the port's D channel supports X.25 signaling, providing a low-cost link to SNA environments without consuming B channel bandwidth. ISDN certifications have been obtained for North America (National ISDN-1 and 5ESS), Europe (Euro ISDN) and Australia. In addition, the S51 has been tested and certified by Novell as the sole ISDN connection option for the company's new line of UNIXware 2.01 Web servers.

Because the S51 is an intelligent communications coprocessor (based on a 20-MHz MC68302 processor), it offloads all low-level protocol processing, conserving valuable server resources for application-oriented tasks.

The S51 supports extensive SNMP MIB II management, plus special Eicon-developed extensions to the MIBs for X.25, frame relay, HDLC and other protocols.

The S51 Multiservice Access Card is available immediately. An optional cable to activate the ISDN port is required. Eicon router and remote SNA communication software for the S51 includes all supported protocols.

Founded in 1984, Eicon Technology is a worldwide provider of server and desktop integrated remote networking solutions. The company develops, markets and supports hardware and software allowing personal computers to access IBM SNA networks and corporate internetworks for client/server location-independent applications. Eicon Technology is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Montreal Exchange under the symbol EIC.

Further information on Eicon products can be obtained through the World Wide Web address http://www.eicon.com/.