There's no question data volumes are growing; how long will it be before 100 megabits isn't enough?
Fortunately, gigabit Ethernet can beef up your bandwidth, in some cases even without upgrading your wiring. In this feature we evaluate the performance benefits and cost effectiveness of gigabit Ethernet over copper and fibre.
The switch is often literally the backbone of the network. Ever since we moved away from the inline topology of 10Base2 (COAX) to the star topology based 10BaseT, we have needed something to bring all those connections together at the centre.
Originally it was the 10Mbit/sec hub, then things started to move faster and we changed to the 100Mb hub. As processing power became greater, thee hubs lost out to the switch, and pretty much all traffic is now moved around the office via 100Mb/sec switches.
As the amount of data continues to increase and many of the functions are moved back to the server, there is a need for servers to transfer data even faster, both between each other and down to the rest of the network.
Gigabit over copper switch was born in 1999 and brought the answer for backend server farms and network backbones. In this review, we look at the current state of play in the low-end gigabit switch arena.
The price of gigabit Ethernet has fallen to the point where it has become a viable, cost-effective option for backbone links between buildings or switches, for high-bandwidth links between servers, and even-in cases such as multimedia production where bandwidth demands are very high-for links between desktops or workstations and servers.
Many organisations already have migrated to Fast Ethernet for their entire network infrastructure. This migration included the increase in bandwidth to the desktop in order to boost LAN performance.
However, that solution has created other problems. While 100Mbps implementation has increased LAN performance to the desktop, it has also created a bottleneck at server connections, switch stacks, and other points of aggregation. Network professionals are turning to Gigabit Ethernet over copper solutions to relieve these bottlenecks.
There are several solutions in which 1000BaseT solutions can be implemented for an organisation. We're going to look at three solutions: server connectivity, switch uplinks, and desktop connectivity.
Server connectivity
Today's servers can process larger files and move more data faster than ever before. Traditional 10/100Mbps network interface cards (NICs) can quickly become a bottleneck when hundreds of clients are passing what can potentially be terabytes of data to and from the server.
This is even more evident when the network involves a lot of server-to-server communication. Outfitting these powerful back-end servers with gigabit NICs can dramatically improve traffic flow. With the price of gigabit NICs hovering in the AU$300 range, going with a 1000BaseT solution here provides the most performance enhancement for the money.
Deployment steps might include replacing 10/100Mbps adaptors with auto-negotiating 10/100/1000 adaptors. Of course, these servers would need to be connected to a gigabit-enabled switch.
With the 1000BaseT standard, gigabit NICs and switches can support both 100/1000 and 10/100/1000 auto-negotiation between Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet. This allows network professionals to deploy 1000BaseT incrementally into the network. For instance, a 100/1000 server NIC may be installed into a new server, while the server switch remains 100BaseTX, or vice versa.
