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Fast Ethernet Workgroup Design 7-11
Fast Ethernet
The Network Designer examines the four types of FN100 Fast Ethernet switch,
looking to see which models support front panel multimode fiber optic
connections. The FN100-8FX and FN100-16FX both provide multimode fiber optic
connections for 100BASE-FX network media, and thus both meet the
requirements of this site.
The Network Designer then examines the port count supported by each device,
and finds that both devices will fill the required network link count of six. The
Network Designer decides, however, to optimize the access of the workgroups to
the three shared fileservers by giving each fileserver a dedicated link to the
backbone switch, similar to the depiction in Figure 7-5.
Figure 7-5. Shared Server Optimizations
These switched station connections will provide full Fast Ethernet speed
connections to each of the fileservers. While this will introduce a switch into the
path from any station to any server, this will offer better throughput from a
network-wide point of view than leaving the servers on their current shared
segments. As no end user station can access the network at a speed greater than
the 10 Mbps provided by the shared Ethernet segments, each fileserver can
theoretically handle requests from all six workgroups simultaneously without
suffering a reduction in throughput to the Fast Ethernet switch.
This optimization of the shared resources of the fileservers will cause the required
number of connections to exceed the number supplied by the FN100-8FX. The
network implementation, therefore, will require the FN100-16FX, which provides
16 multimode fiber optic connections.
switch
Servers
(100 Mbps)
Workgroups
(10 Mbps)
2094n25