IT departments that deploy and manage a company’s local area network (LAN) face a fundamental choice: Stick with 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet or upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). While 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet might provide enough bandwidth for your current campus network, a Gigabit Ethernet upgrade prepares the LAN for future needs while protecting business trade secrets and ensuring smooth operations. There are five questions that explain why Gigabit Ethernet is quickly becoming a business necessity.

1. Is that much bandwidth necessary?

It may seem that investing in Gigabit Ethernet is unnecessary in cases where end-user applications are not fully utilizing all the bandwidth of Fast Ethernet. While enterprises refresh servers, desktops and laptops on a constant basis, a campus LAN typically has an extended lifecycle. Company executives and network administrators must strategically weigh bandwidth needs against projected demands over the next 5 to 7 years.

VoIP telephony (such as Yealink’s industry-leading VoIP phones) has already migrated into the communications device portfolio of many manufacturers, leading to a rapid increase in bandwidth requirements. The wide deployment and maturity of UC&C, desktop videoconferencing, and the broader use of wireless devices have had a profound impact on the network and on bandwidth demand. Network capacity planning should account for the convergence of these disparate systems and their bandwidth requirements, which tend to grow even more quickly than an organization’s general rate of growth.

2. Is network performance guaranteed? 

Gigabit Ethernet is 10 times faster than 100 Mbps Ethernet, making it capable of supporting multiple work groups and segments and allowing for future enterprise growth. Gigabit Ethernet supports existing traffic management and quality of service by increasing network speed with no technical adjustments. When a campus uses its network for voice communication, videoconferencing and content sharing, Gigabit Ethernet effectively eliminates latency problems and reduces disruptions, ultimately ensuring the smooth operation of the company’s business.

3. What about network security?

Improved performance is the most obvious argument for migrating to Gigabit Ethernet, but the upgrade also impacts manageability, quality of service and security.

The latest generation of network management features are baked into Gigabit Ethernet switches, allowing network administrators to assign QoS and security policies to specific applications. As private cloud services such as remote storage and cloud communication become more common, data traffic amongst employees, customers and partners quickly multiplies. The advanced management features of Gigabit Ethernet help network administrators guarantee service level and enhance security.

4. Does it save money? 

Even when a company’s budget is tight, Gigabit Ethernet is still ideal. Today’s servers process larger files and transfer more data faster than ever before and applications such as data warehousing, real-time content sharing and videoconferencing require a stable high-speed network. The network and its server connections must be up to the task.

The faster speeds and robust management features of Gigabit Ethernet efficiently deliver customer communication, enhance employee collaboration and ultimately create a high-performance workplace. These benefits typically outweigh the cost of prewiring gigabit cabling upfront. Enterprises who ignore this trend end up encountering bottlenecks down the road, forcing them to pay for equipment replacement and deployment on top of a pre-existing slower network, leading to higher IT effort and expenses.

5. How to select the equipment?

Servers, switches and desktop equipment should have Gigabit connections to support networked applications and to allow for high-speed data transfers. Even if a company has yet to upgrade its network to Gigabit, it is vital to consider Gigabit support as an upfront investment, especially given that Gigabit gear can accommodate 100 Mbps connections. For example, the desktop IP Phones. Enterprises should consider HD voice, ease of use and deployment, and Gigabit support. Customer satisfaction is higher when clients can be heard and answers are crisp and clear. Yealink’s ultra-elegant Gigabit phones like the SIP-T48G, the SIP-T46G and the SIP-T42G come equipped with dual-port Gigabit Ethernet. They are designed to give end users more lifelike voice communication with faster network performance, all the while reducing latency and disruption problems.