Most U.S. businesses are designing their networks based on outdated assumptions, resulting in expensive purchases of unnecessary services and equipment. At least that’s the opinion of Mark Fabbi, vice president and distinguished analyst for enterprise networking at Gartner.
Carolyn Duffy Marsan is a senior editor with Network World and covers emerging Internet technologies and standards. Reach her at cmarsan@nww.com
Fabbi recently released research that indicates most U.S. businesses continue to upgrade their networks by adding bandwidth at headquarters, particularly for desktop users and Internet uplinks. However, this approach fails to address the fact that most corporate users are now at branch or home offices or on the go.
"Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop is a big waste," Fabbi says. "Then companies buy 10G uplinks. They start overbuilding the uplinks and then they start thinking they need a bigger switch in the core. We need to rethink this whole idea that bigger and faster is what we do with networks."
Fabbi says that only a small percentage of workers - such as engineers using computer-aided design, geographic information systems or scientific visualization - require Gigabit Ethernet at the desktop. However, Gartner is seeing a big increase in sales of Gigabit Ethernet products across all industries.
"Gigabit Ethernet is one aspect of this problem," Fabbi says. "There are a few applications where users do need more bandwidth like video production houses, medical imaging and high-end scientific research... But the remaining 85% to 90% of users just push around spreadsheets or PowerPoint slides. Even high quality voice doesn’t take up that much bandwidth."
Browse Newsletter categories: Branch Office Best Practices | Convergence | High Speed LANs | Identity Management | IT Careers and Training | IT Leadership | Linux | Messaging | Network Optimization | Network/Systems Management | New Data Center Strategies | Novell NetWare Tips | Optical Networking | Outsourcing | Security Strategies | Servers | Service Provider News Report | Small Business Technology | Storage in the Enterprise | Technology Executive | View from The Edge | Virus and Bug Patch Alert | VORTEX Digest | VPNs | Web Applications | Wide Area Networking | Windows Networking Strategies | Wireless in the Enterprise |
|
Does Verizon's Voyager stack up to the iPhone? |
5 IT skills that won't boost your salary 
[1,407]
Women 4 times more likely than men to cough up personal info [589]
Japan's 10 funniest tech-related commercials [Videos] [407]
Throwing away a promo CD is "unauthorized distribution"? [1,265]
Adults too quick to dismiss educational video games [682]
Attack of the iPhone clones [Slideshow] [578]
10 things IT needs to know about AJAX [1,258]
This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries [Slideshow] [409]
