Gigabit Ethernet

Gigabit Ethernet
In the corporate market,
Gigabit Ethernet
is the new hot thing. What is so great about Gigabit
is that it can use the same network that your 10Mbps and 100Mbps Ethernet now use. You certainly
do have to worry about distance constraints, but what a difference it can make in just a
server farm alone!
TABLE 1 3 . 1
Comparison of FastEthernet Technologies
Technology Wiring Category Distance
100BaseTX Category 5 UTP wiring; Categories 6 and 7 are now available.
Category 6 is sometimes referred to as Cat 5 plus.
Two-pair wiring.
100 meters
100BaseT4 Four-pair wiring, using UTP Category 3, 4, or 5. 100 meters
100BaseFX Multimode fiber (MMF) with 62.5-micron fiber-optic core
with a 125-micron outer cladding (62.5/125).
400 meters
Using Ethernet Media in Your Network
421
Just think how nice it would be to have all your servers connected to Ethernet switches with
Gigabit Ethernet and all your users using 100BaseT-switched connections. Of course, all your
switches would connect with Gigabit links as well. Add xDSL and cable to connect to the Internet,
and you have more bandwidth than you ever could have imagined just a few years ago. Will
it be enough bandwidth a few years from now? Probably not. If you have the bandwidth, users
will find a way to use it.
Parkinson’s Law states that data expands to fill the space available for storage,
but experience shows that this law can be equally applied to bandwidth.