Today`s switch technology is allowing enterprise customers to be much more flexible than they could be over the past 10 years. In fact, the co-existence of switching technologies fits in perfectly with companies` business plans.
Wolfgang Held, network consultant at 3Com SA, looks at how both modular and fixed switches have played key roles in the evolution of companies` networks.
In the 1990s, the technology industry experienced enormous changes in networking technology, as switches replaced hubs and new standards, such as Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet, emerged.
While the impact of LAN (local area network) switching on enterprise networks could be measured in multi-protocol support, multi-layer performance and faster speed over the last decade, the impact in the first decade of the 21st century can be measured more in cost savings and achieving strategic business objectives through the switch-based network.
The great network technology debates of the 1990s included many issues on which customers, partners and vendors could take sides, as if in a sporting match.
Would Gigabit Ethernet overtake ATM networks? Would traffic prioritisation change the way IP networks could handle time-sensitive traffic? Could Layer 3 switching change the way networks are built in a router-centric world?
The arguments for "yes" were the strongest. Then there were matters of opinion and experience. For example, are you for modular chassis switches or for stackable switches?
However, today the focus of building enterprise networks is no longer so heavily on the "bits and bytes" that dominated dialogues in the 1990s. Now, the lines that once reinforced separate "camps" - such as, the chassis camp vs the fixed-configuration camp - within the networking industry years ago, have changed and have given way to a whole new way of looking at different "form factors" of LAN switches in a new complementary way.
Because the focus is on business justification of network purchases today, the co-existence of switching technology, no matter what the form factor (whether chassis, fixed or stackable), fits perfectly into a business` IT plan to have a scalable network at an affordable price. Indeed, new switch technology is allowing enterprise customers to be much more flexible today than they could be over the past 10 years. Two of the most significant changes in the evolution of enterprise networks in the last six months have been (a) the lower prices of modular chassis switches, and (b) the increased resiliency of fixed-configuration switches. These changes have led to a combination that enables an enterprise IT manager to scale the network at a more affordable price.
Traditionally, modular chassis switches were expensive, while fixed-configuration switches were viewed as less reliable, yet cheaper than chassis switches.
Today, the extensive work behind the scenes to take the cost out of modular chassis switches and to increase the resiliency of fixed switches for more demanding enterprise applications has changed the equation for building a high-performance, scalable network.
Three shifts have occurred to the benefit of enterprise customers:
* Cost factor - The lower cost of modular chassis switches allow IT managers to lower the total cost of owning a significant network, while keeping all the sophisticated features and functionality that an IT manager would expect.
* Network availability - The increased resiliency of fixed-configuration switches allow IT managers to be more flexible in adding resiliency to an enterprise network, enabling a distributed network to be more reliable.
* Network scalability - The combination of modular chassis and fixed-configuration switches generate new flexibility in scaling an enterprise network, as the chassis can deliver the core functionality while the fixed switches create highly available, distributed fabrics around the chassis, making the best of both.
How has all this change emerged?
The standardisation of Ethernet LAN switch technology, focusing on 10/100/1000, has created new efficiencies that have contributed to the opportunity to remove cost from the chassis solutions. At the same time, the simplifying of network management has reduced the "total" cost of the modular solution, including maintenance and upgrade.
Also, the blending of innovative technology and the new thinking around LAN switching bring down old barriers and allow network products to meet enterprise business requirements, instead of the other way around.
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