On Sat, Aug 12, 2000 at 11:20:54PM +0100, Ben Harris wrote:
> In article <3995C5B7.FE4B91C7@augustsson.net> you write:
> >Jonathan Stone wrote:
> >> In message <39956750.A6961B6A@augustsson.net>Lennart Augustsson writes
> >> Also, how many ports do the devices have? With two serial cables per
> >> machine, its pretty easy to get to a point where a Cyclades (or
> >> Rocketport, drivers, sigh) starts to win on cabling count.
> >
> >The Inland adapter has one port.  I've only seen max two ports on a USB
> >adapter.
> 
> Xircom do devices with four ports, and they also have a USB hub in them.

I think there's a mistaken analysis going on here.  You need one cable
per machine, obviously, no matter *what* you do -- Cyclades, Rocketport,
or USB.

Using USB lets you hub things together, which keeps the cable count way
down even if you only use single-port adapters -- only one or two
cables, ultimately, ever reach the terminal server machine at the root
of the tree.  You have the same number of cables as you would with the
multiport serial cards, but the one that actually plugs into the server
host, as well as the ones that span between the main hub on each rack,
is a nice thin little USB cable, not some huge thick spider that 
actually has sixteen separate cables in it, nor an expensive piece of
fibre.