In fiber optics, and especially in telecommunications, a star coupler is a passive optical device, used in network applications.
Digital Equipment Corporation (now part of Hewlett-Packard) of Maynard, Massachusetts sold a star coupler that interconnected links to computers via coaxial cable rather than optical fibres, but the function was essentially the same.
The signal that was distributed was 70 Mbit/s computer interconnect (CI) data and the star coupler provided two redundant paths of either 8 or 16 ports each.
Digital's star coupler was developed for use with the VAX- and later Alpha-based computers running Digital's OpenVMS operating system, to provide a passive, highly reliable interconnect for Digital's cluster technology.
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