Netgear FS524S Whitepaper - Page 1

4500 Great America Parkway • Santa Clara, CA 95054 Small Business Stackable Switch White Paper January 16, 2001 Today's fast-paced global business arena, spurred by the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW), has changed the ground rules for small offices, requiring them to work faster, be more responsive to customers, and outpace a worldwide range of competitors. At the same time, the Internet and WWW have also provided new ways for small offices to not only survive ? but thrive ? in these market conditions. To take advantage of today's unprecedented opportunities, small offices are deploying larger networks, higher-performance personal computers (PCs) and servers, and resource-hungry client/server applications that consume large amounts of bandwidth to support Internet- and/or intranetbased customer transactions or other business activities. At the same time, small offices are facing the growing challenge of providing users with sufficient bandwidth to perform day-to-day activities such as: • Accessing e-mail, the Internet, and the company intranet • Fetching image-enhanced documents • Accessing graphics-intensive files • Conducting unified voice/data messaging and Internet telephony activities Stackable switch technology offers a solution for improving network performance, relieving bandwidth bottlenecks, while allowing small offices to preserve their investment in their current network infrastructure. Stackable switch technology also offers advantages in performance and provides the framework for utilizing evolving technologies, such as Gigabit Ethernet, as they become available. This White Paper explains stackable switching technology, its origins, and its advantages. This Paper also identifies the features to look for in a stackable switch. 1