£10,000 for a PC?

If you thought networking equipment was overpriced, you might be right.

A steely-eyed systems engineer has reported that the £10,000 Network Analysis Module for the Catalyst range of switches is really a PC running the free Linux operating system.

The plug-in 'blade' module has a plate at the front warning that it is for 'Vendor Use Only', but when removed it reveals a parallel port, serial USB ports and sockets for a mouse, keyboard and VGA monitor. The card also appears to be running Linux.

Dean Smith, product marketing manager for Cisco, said: "One of the things with this platform is that there's a lot of integrated circuitry onboard especially to interconnect with the switch fabric and backplane on the host.

"The cost is quite minimal in comparison to the cost of a network probe."

Dean explained that the unit's features, functionality and network integration spoke for itself, especially in comparison with other monitoring options.

Similarly, Cisco's integrated decision support intrusion protection 'blade' for the same series of switches also seems to have a lot in common with traditional PC architecture and even appears to be running Windows NT 4.0 workstation.

Dean argued that, while the device shared a similar hardware platform to the NAM module, it also included "hardware acceleration and stuff like that", and that both devices differed significantly from standard PC architecture.