🚀 go-pugleaf

>  Can somebody give me a quick rundown on the
>  advantages of each?

I think of them addressing quite different situations.  I have helped
set up a net of about 50 nodes with probably 10,000 feet of twisted
pair that is run with two star controllers. Now its likely we'd be best
off adding a pair of kboxes to the net. Roughly, the advantages of each:

Star controller:
Each of twelve legs of the star has its own driver, so its length and
branching limitations are similar to one entire passive net. In this
way the star acts as a repeater.

The Star has good diagnostics to test line quality, that helps isolate
poor transmission in one leg that might hurt the rest of the net.

Kbox:
It is a gateway, so you can set up zones, limit traffic to part of the
net, and exceed the local 32 mac limit.  This is in addition to the 
benefits of being able to talk to the rest of the world, and tie into
"etherTalk."

The Kbox is more complicated to set up, since it runs software and
deals with protocols, and the star is passive from a protocol
viewpoint.

-johnmark

John Mark Agosta