Nortel Networks 70 Series Chapter Network Configuration, Benefits of Using Switching Technology

Chapter 2

Network Configuration

The BayStack 70 Series 10/100 Ethernet Switch is designed to provide flexibility in configuring your network connections. Each switch in the series can be used as a standalone device or can be used with 10 Mb/s and/or 100 Mb/s hubs or other interconnection devices in various configurations. The configuration examples in this chapter illustrate the integration of the switches in network environments of all sizes and types. These examples include a network of a few workstations connected to a printer or a segmented network with multiple users or workgroups and other networking devices.

Benefits of Using Switching Technology

Ethernet switches provide private, dedicated, 10 Mb/s or 100 Mb/s capacity to each connected PC/server or hub/workgroup segment, which is a significantly higher capacity than in a shared environment. The higher bandwidth enables the use of applications such as multimedia, imaging, video, or high-performance client-server functions among users who are spread out over the network.

This improvement is accomplished very easily, with no change to the desktop (such as, network interface cards or software and network wiring). As a result, the performance upgrade and the applications enabled by the switch are obtained very quickly and at a low cost.

Ethernet switches significantly increase network throughput by segmenting network traffic. Switches check traffic coming in to each port to learn which network device is located on which segment. Based on this information, switches forward cross-segment traffic only to the appropriate segment. The traffic will not show up in the other segments because it is filtered out. In this way, network capacity is fully reserved for traffic destined for that segment only, and other segments will not be saturated with unnecessary traffic.

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