Summary
Now that you have completed this chapter, you should a have a firm understanding of the following concepts:
  • Despite the advent of superior standards, 10Mbps Ethernet is the most pervasive LAN technology in the networking industry.
  • Several 10 Mbps systems still exist with varied media options such as copper and fiber and you should expect to encounter this type of connection method for at least another few years.
  • Because of the limitations that legacy Ethernet can impose on some applications, higher speed network technologies had to be developed. IEEE created Fast Ethernet to meet this need.
  • With the capability to run in full-duplex modes, Fast Ethernet offers significant bandwidth leaps to meet the needs of many users.
  • For real bandwidth consumers, Gigabit Ethernet offers even more capacity to meet the needs of trunking switches together and to feed high performance file servers.