| As the speed of computer systems increases exponentially each year, the network itself rather than the processing power of the systems is in danger of becoming a bottleneck. Gigabit and fiber networks have helped to redress the balance, but it is still necessary to monitor the usage of the network ”or segments of it ”to establish whether it is capable of supporting the demand being placed upon it. Most company computer networks can be divided into three general structures: the corporate backbone or wide area network (WAN), the campus backbone, and local area network (LAN) connections. These three structures require different levels of service and are discussed in this section. -
Corporate backbone ”A large number of companies tend to use the fastest (and most expensive) network hardware for the corporate backbone ”that is, the main spine running through the company's IT infrastructure, much like a freeway connecting several cities. This backbone is used primarily to interconnect departments (or sites) and to provide services affecting the entire company, such as domain name services, firewalls, and the main routing infrastructure. A network capacity of 100Mbps is the minimum for a large organization, although this may prove to be insufficient and too slow to provide an acceptable level of service. -
Campus backbone ”This part of the network typically contains servers providing services to specific departments. A network capacity of 100Mbps is normally required because the kind of services being provided at this level include email servers, file servers, and application servers. Demand is likely to be high but is more localized than that required of the corporate backbone. This level of the network can be likened to the major roads leading from the freeway to the various towns. -
LAN connections ”In the road analogy, this level represents the streets that lead to individual houses . The bandwidth requirement is again more localized, so demand is reduced. Connections to individual hosts normally carry less traffic than at the higher levels, where the services being provided are more generic and are applicable to many hosts. A 10Mbps network has typically been used to serve this level of the corporate network, but modern, busy offices find that it is quickly becoming insufficient for their needs. More companies are upgrading this network level to 100Mbps. This list is intended to be a general overview of a company's network. On some occasions individual users might require a significant bandwidth ”for example, the transmission of video data. In these instances, dedicated subnetworks can be installed to provide additional bandwidth. Devices such as the Sun QuadFast Ethernet card can be configured to act as a "large data pipe," allowing four separate 100Mbps connections into one 400Mbps connection. This can be doubled to 800Mbps if Sun Trunking software is used with compatible switch equipment. |
