Network Planning; Introduction To Switching - Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 User Manual

3

Network Planning

3.1

Introduction to Switching

A network switch allows simultaneous transmission of multiple packets via non-crossbar switching. This
means that it can partition a network more efficiently than bridges or routers. The switch has, therefore,
been recognized as one of the most important building blocks for today's networking technology.
When performance bottlenecks are caused by congestion at the network access point (e.g., the network
card for a high-volume file server), the device experiencing the congestion (e.g., a server or user), can
be attached directly to a switched port. This allocates the full bandwidth of the Ethernet segment to the
devices attached to a single port on the switch. And, when operating at full-duplex, the bandwidth of the
dedicated segment can be doubled to further maximize throughput.
When networks are based on repeater (hub) technology, the maximum distance between end stations is
limited. For traditional Ethernet, there may be up to four hubs between any pair of stations; for Fast
Ethernet, the maximum is two. This is known as the hop count. However, a switch turns the hop count
back to zero, subdividing the network into smaller and more manageable segments, and linking them to
the larger network by means of a switch, thereby removing this limitation.
The Ethernet Connection Blade can be easily configured into any Ethernet network to significantly boost
bandwidth, while using conventional cabling and network cards.
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