Conclusion
As the Internet explosion continues, deployment of bandwidth-hungry applications is likely to grow at all levels of the enterprise for the foreseeable future. At the same time, managers will often be faced with budgets that do not allow forklift upgrades to handle this increased load. The most appropriate solution is to future-proof the network with Gigabit-enabled adapters and uplinks, and add Gigabit infrastructure in incremental stages. A variety of connectivity products are available that can easily be shifted to 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps as Fast and Gigabit Ethernet are deployed. The Gigabit over copper standard is an important part of the solution, allowing managers to quickly and inexpensively turn up the speed on the Category 5 cabling already installed.
Intel offers a variety of Gigabit Ethernet solutions. Among these are Gigabit over copper devices including switches, uplinks and network adapter cards.
For More Information
The following sources can provide more detail on Gigabit Ethernet, cabling for Gigabit Ethernet over copper and Intel's Gigabit Ethernet product solutions.
Intel Networking Products:
www.intel.com/network
Gigabit Ethernet Alliance:
www.Gigabit-ethernet.org
Cabling:
www.bicsi.org
Gigabit Ethernet Standards:
standards.ieee.org
and
grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/3/index.html
