Allied Telesis GS900/5E manual Collapsed Backbone

Collapsed Backbone

AT-GS900/16, AT-GS900/24 Fanless Gigabit Ethernet Switches Installation Guide

In the topology illustrated in Figure 5, an AT-GS900/16 switch connects Fast Ethernet switches that have Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. This type of topology is often referred to as a collapsed backbone topology. The switch functions as the focal point of the network and transfers an Ethernet frame between the Fast Ethernet switches only when the destination end-node for the frame is on a different switch than the end-node that originated the frame. This reduces the amount of unnecessary data traffic in each workgroup, freeing up bandwidth and improving network performance.

AT-GS900/16 Fanless Gigabit Ethernet Switch

1281

Fast Ethernet

Switches with

Gigabit Uplinks

			5	4	3	2	1				5	4	3	2	1				5	4	3	2	1
8	7	6						8	7	6						8	7	6

Legend

10 Mbps

100Mbps 1000 Mbps

Figure 5. Collapsed Backbone - Hub Topology

21