The Digi DataFire SYNC/570i family of synchronous WAN communication adapters is a very cost-effective line of products for LAN-to-LAN, client-to-LAN and client-to-IBM host connectivity. This family of products is ideal for branch office and enterprise solutions where two to 16 ports per server are required. As a complete hardware and software solution, the DataFire SYNC/570i provides tightly integrated remote LAN connectivity for major operating system environments including Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP. The product family offers a universal interface bus (UIB) capable of supporting a different interface on each individual port. No jumpers or switches are needed-simply connect the cable for the selected interface. All models have an advanced feature set allowing them to support line speeds up to T1/E1. These features include a design based on the Hitachi HD64570 Serial Communications Adapter (SCA) chip. This highly integrated sub-system supports two synchronous serial ports and four DMA channels, plus interrupt and timer logic. In addition, it has many protocol-specific features designed to maximize performance by minimizing driver overhead. The key to the performance of the DataFire SYNC/570i is its Direct Memory Access (DMA)-to-shared memory architecture. Its on-board 256K memory is directly addressable by both the system and the DMA of the SCA. Program-initiated DMA transfers operate at DMA/memory speed independently of other system activity. This results in reduced system overhead and aggregated hardware line speeds of up to 5 Mbps.