4.1 Introduction

The popularity of Web entertainment, E-commerce, and distance learning, and the concurrent demand for ready access to Web applications in the local networking environment, contribute to the widespread implementation of Ethernet communications networks. A flexible, reliable, scalable, and dependable technology, the Ethernet technology suite sustains intranet, extranet, and Internet connectivity in LAN (Local Area Network) environments and interoperates with wireline and wireless solutions.

The Ethernet technology suite is defined by a series of specifications and supplements associated with the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.3 family of LAN standards. An Ethernet LAN supports operations in a delimited geographic area such as a classroom, a multistory office building, a factory, or a cluster of buildings on a university campus, and enables information exchange and shared workgroup applications over a common communications medium. The multiservice Ethernet platform interworks with technologies that include Frame Relay (FR), FDDI (Fiber Data Distributed Interface), Fibre Channel (FC), DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), cable modem, WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing), and DWDM (Dense WDM).

A conventional, in-place, 10 Mbps (Megabits per second) Ethernet platform can be readily upgraded to Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and ultimately 10 Gigabit (Gigabits per second or Gbps) Ethernet. As a result, institutions and organizations with in-place 10 Mbps Ethernet implementations that migrate to faster and more powerful Ethernet solutions preserve their investments in Ethernet equipment while gaining additional bandwidth capacity and infrastructure services.

A ubiquitous LAN solution, Ethernet is the technology of choice for local network implementations in schools, colleges,...