D-Link 1008TL User Guide - Page 4

INTRODUCTION This section describes the features of the DGS-1008TL 8-Port 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet Switch, as well as giving some background information about Gigabit Ethernet and switching technology. Gigabit Ethernet Technology Gigabit Ethernet is an extension of IEEE 802.3 Ethernet, utilizing the same packet structure, format, and support for CSMA/CD protocol, full-duplex mode, flow control, and management objects, but with a tenfold increase in theoretical throughput over 100Mbps Fast Ethernet and a hundredfold increase over 10Mbps Ethernet. Since it is backwards compatible with all 10Mbps and 100Mbps Ethernet environments, Gigabit Ethernet provides a straightforward upgrade without rendering a company's existing investment in hardware, software, and trained personnel obselete. The increased speed and extra bandwidth offered by Gigabit Ethernet is essential to coping with the network bottlenecks that frequently develop as computers and their buses get faster and more users use high-bandwidth applications that generate more traffic. Upgrading key components, such as backbone and servers, to Gigabit Ethernet can greatly improve network response times as well as significantly speed up the traffic between your subnets. Gigabit Ethernet supports video conferencing, complex imaging, and similar data-intensive applications. Likewise, since data transfers occur 10 times faster than Fast Ethernet, servers outfitted with Gigabit Ethernet NIC's are able to perform 10 times the number of operations in the same amount of time.