S P E C I A L A D V E R T I S I N G S E C T I O N

INSIDE
Securing Your Gigabit Infrastructure…2a
Intel and Cisco: Delivering Leading,…0a

gigabit
Interoperable Gigabit Solutions…2a
Hyper-Threading and GigE: Perfect Together…3a
Gigabit to the Desktop Increases…0a
Server Performance…4a

ethernet 401 Key Infrastructure for Today’s IT Environments

T
oday’s security, application and business continuity require-
ments are putting new pressures on corporate networks and
IT budgets. IT departments have made significant invest-
ments in layered security down to the desktop level to count-
er threats that are more numerous and sophisticated than ever
before, as well as to comply with recent legislation like the Gramm-
Leach-Bliley Act1. This not only means deploying more firewalls,
antivirus solutions, and intrusion detection systems, but also
sending software and antivirus updates over the network to plug
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: ALAMY (2); COMSTOCK

desktop and server vulnerabilities as they’re discovered.

New threats and regulations also require robust business conti-
nuity solutions, which in turn drive the need for more comprehen-
sive and frequent backups over the network and more frequent
use of bandwidth-intensive data replication and mirroring. And
since many of today’s businesses require 24/7 operation, there’s
often no dedicated time window just for backups. All of these func-
tions must take place on a live network without affecting user
access or productivity. >>

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gigabit
ethernet 401
If that wasn’t enough of a challenge,
more companies are taking advantage of
bandwidth-intensive Web conferencing
and video streaming applications to
accelerate important decisions, improve
team collaboration, train employees
more efficiently, and reduce travel costs.
These applications need not only band-
width, but also quality of service network-
ing technologies that can prioritize delay-
sensitive traffic (such as IP telephony
and video) over less-critical traffic.
Finally, organizations are increasingly tak-
ing advantage of e-business, enterprise
resource planning and business intelli-
gence applications—both internally and
remotely—to reap productivity gains and
create competitive advantages.
For many corporate networks, meet-
ing some or all of these demands means
upgrading to an infrastructure based on
10 Gigabit and Gigabit Ethernet—all the
way down to the desktop.
Giga-Growth
Just as companies made the switch en
masse from 10 Mbps Ethernet to 100
Mbps Ethernet in the late 1990s, market
data shows they’re making a similar
move to 1000 Mbps Ethernet today.
According to research firm In-Stat MDR,
“Fast Ethernet shipments increased only
marginally for the [fourth] quarter [of
2003], while Gigabit Ethernet shipments
grew at very strong double-digit rates, fur-
ther highlighting the shift in the market
away from Fast Ethernet toward Gigabit
Ethernet.”2
This shift is fueled not only by the need
for bandwidth, but also by affordable pric-
ing. For instance, a growing number of cor-
porate desktops and servers come with
Gigabit Ethernet connectivity
integrated on the mother-
board—for virtually no premi-
um over yesterday’s Fast
Ethernet connections. Auto-
negotiating 10/100/1000 Mbps desktop
adapters can be purchased for about $50,
while single-port server adapters (for cop-
per cabling) sell for under $150. In addi-
tion, 10/100/1000 Mbps switch ports
now only cost 10-15 percent more than
10/100 Mbps switch ports. This means
that IT managers can bring Gigabit Ethernet
to desktops for a nominal incremental cost.
Since most Gigabit adapters and
switch ports are backwards compatible
with Fast Ethernet, the migration can be
gradual and relatively hassle-free. As a
result, many companies are taking
advantage of this cost-efficient transition
to Gigabit Ethernet. According to In-Stat
MDR, about 76 percent of IT managers
plan to continue deploying Gigabit
Ethernet in both the desktop PCs and
servers they plan to purchase in 2004.3
This widespread acceptance of
Gigabit on the desktop is in turn driving
the growth of 10 Gigabit Ethernet
(10GbE). According to strategic consul-
tancy RHK, “... the marked ramp of 1G
copper and 10G ports, coupled with con-
tinued price declines for 10G interfaces,
indicate that 10G has indeed achieved
mainstream market acceptance.”4
10 Gigabit Ethernet
deployments are affordable
today due to attractive
switch port and adapter
pricing and the availability
of 10GbE over existing multimode fiber
cabling. Also, 10GbE multimode fiber
switch ports and adapter cards are now
more cost-effective per Gbps and utilize
less fiber cabling than multiple Gigabit
Ethernet fiber connections.
Intel and Cisco: Delivering
Leading, Interoperable
Gigabit Solutions
If your company is contemplating an
upgrade to a predominantly Gigabit/10
Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure, the best
way to do it is to use standards-based,
reliable products that are easy to install
and manage, and tested to work together
and with existing operating systems.
Intel, the market leader in Gigabit

Securing Your Gigabit Infrastructure

Cisco® Catalyst® switches pro-
vide leading-edge integrated
security technologies to pro-
tect the Gigabit infrastructure
and end users from attacks
and to control network
access. Catalyst switches pro-
tect themselves from worms
and Denial of Service (DoS)
attacks by using port security,
which limits the number of
MAC addresses that can be
learned on a port. In addition,
by using a topology-based
switching mechanism, Cisco
Express Forwarding mitigates
the effects of DoS attacks
that attempt to flood the flow
cache in a switch. Finally, the
Catalyst 6500 with Supervisor
720 offers additional DoS pro-
tection through granular CPU
rate limiters that control the
rate at which various types of
packets can be sent to the
switch CPU.
Cisco Catalyst switches
can also protect users and
servers from “man-in-the-mid-
dle” attacks, where a mali-
cious user tries to spy on other
employees, managers or exec-
utive staff. By building a secu-
rity table using DHCP
Snooping and Option 82,
Catalyst switches can offer
Dynamic ARP Inspection
(DAI), which prevents mali-
cious users from spoofing a
default gateway, and IP Source
Guard, which prevents a mali-
cious user from hijacking
another user’s IP address.
Using IEEE 802.1x with
Cisco enhancements, Cisco
Catalyst switches can also
authenticate users before they
are allowed onto the network
and then control what network
resources the users can
access, regardless of location
or device type used. Not only
does this integrated security
technology protect the net-
work from unauthorized users,
it could, for example, securely
place guest users on a sepa-
rate VLAN that only provides
access to the Internet and
nothing else.

1
The Financial Modernization Act of 1999, designed to protect consumers’ personal financial information held by financial institutions.
2
In-Stat MDR, “10GbE Market Shows Exceptional Growth in 4Q 2003,” March 10, 2004
3
In-Stat MDR, “The Need for Speed: End-User Survey of Trends in GigE and 10 GigE LAN Connectivity,” January 2004
4
RHK, “Gigabit Copper Growth Signals Switch to 10 Gigabit Ethernet,” February 17, 2004

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desktop and server connections, and
Cisco, the leader in Gigabit/10 Gigabit
switching, provide such a solution. Intel
offers the comprehensive, award-winning
family of Intel® PRO/1000 Network
Connections standards-based Gigabit
Ethernet desktop and server adapters
with both fiber and copper connections,
as well as Gigabit LAN-on-motherboard
controllers that have been integrated into
thousands of desktops and servers from
major system vendors. The Cisco
Catalyst product line includes a number
of intelligent switching platforms that
offer feature-rich, high-density Gigabit
Ethernet and 10GbE connectivity over
fiber and copper cabling.
Intel and Cisco have tested their prod-
uct lines together extensively to ensure
compatibility with each other’s products
and with different operating systems.
The result is that your company gets
interoperability backed by the experience
and expertise of the industry leaders in
Gigabit solutions.
Gigabit Ethernet solutions from Intel
and Cisco offer other features that reduce
upgrade headaches. For example, Intel®
SingleDriver™ technology saves time and
resources by letting you use the same
driver across all PCs with Intel PRO/1000
Network Connections—regardless of time
of deployment or brand of PC. Cisco
Catalyst modular switches can simultane-
ously support 10/100/1000 Mbps and
standards-based Power over Ethernet
(PoE) functionality, reducing the cost of
deploying IP phones, wireless access
points, IP surveillance cameras, and other
PoE-enabled devices.
Optimizing Server I/O
Performance
For servers, Intel® PRO/1000 MT Dual
Port Server Adapters and Intel®
PRO/1000 MT Quad Port Server Adapters
are affordable options for adding capacity
for better performance. Careful placement
of these adapters in the most appropriate
PCI slot locations can bring dramatic bene-
fits both in terms of bandwidth and server
performance and availability.
For example, 32-bit, 33-MHz PCI slots
can only deliver up to 1 Gbps raw bus
bandwidth. However, 64-bit, 66-MHz

Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Deployments PCI/PCI-X slots provide up to 4.2

Gbps; and 64-bit, 133-MHz slots
Cisco Catalyst IBM IBM provide 8 Gbps raw bus bandwidth.
6500 ThinkPad® ThinkPad
T Series T Series By placing a single Intel PRO/1000
MT Quad Port Server Adapter in a
64-bit, 133-MHz slot, you can
upgrade server performance signifi-
IBM IBM cantly, and still have slots available
ThinkPad ThinkCentre™
Cisco Catalyst T Series Series for other cards, such as RAID con-
4500 Cisco Application Database
Catalyst Web trollers.
6500
Also, Intel adapters’ Advanced
IBM
xSeries Network Services features allow
Servers
Cisco you to team adapters to scale your
Catalyst
6500 server bandwidth. Whether you’re
Building 1 using Gigabit EtherChannel® or the
Data Center IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation stan-
dard, you can automatically balance
traffic among multiple ports for up
to 8 Gbps total bandwidth.
CORE Intel® PRO/1000 multiport
adapters also allow you to distrib-
ute traffic over several subnets
IBM
IBM with a single adapter. That way, you
ThinkCentre
ThinkPad Series can separate and secure logical
Cisco Catalyst T Series = Intel® PRO/1000 MT Mobile
3750G (stack) Connection (integrated) networks such as front-end Web
= Intel® PRO/1000 MT Desktop Adapter servers, application servers and
(integrated connection also available) back-end databases. By configuring
®
= Intel PRO/1000 MT Server Adapters connections for automatic failover,
ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL MIRTO

you add availability and fault toler-

= Intel® PRO/1000 MF Server Adapters
ance as well.
Cisco Catalyst
6500 = Intel® PRO/10GbE SR Server Adapter
Building 2 Hyper-Threading and
= Gigabit Ethernet over copper
GigE: Perfect Together
= Gigabit Ethernet over fiber
Raw bandwidth is not the only way
= 10 Gigabit Ethernet to enhance user productivity. Many

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gigabit
ethernet 401 Gigabit Clients Improve Server Performance
Gigabit Ethernet clients utilize server resources far more efficiently than Fast
Ethernet clients, which can help enterprise server consolidation efforts.
newer PCs utilize the Intel® Pentium® 4
processor supporting Hyper-Threading
(HT) Technology†, which allows the oper-
ating system to execute two application
threads in parallel. HT Technology alone
can increase the performance of desktop
applications when networked applica-
tions such as antivirus updates, software
patches and database queries are run-
ning in the background. Combine the
multitasking benefits of HT Technology
with Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop, and
the benefit is even greater.
VeriTest®, an independent testing lab-
oratory, showed the dramatic multitask-
ing performance benefits of HT
Technology combined with Gigabit
Ethernet.5 VeriTest used Adobe Distiller*
to convert an 8.4 MB Microsoft
PowerPoint* presentation to Adobe
Acrobat* PDF format on a number of
desktop PCs, while simultaneously using
Windows Explorer* to download 1.46 GB to complete requests with Gigabit Building the Right Foundation
of files from a server. Ethernet clients much faster than with If organizations want to reap the busi-
On a 2.8-GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 proces- Fast Ethernet clients, and therefore had ness and competitive benefits of
sor with HT Technology PC with Gigabit far fewer active Gigabit connections per today’s e-business applications, while
Ethernet, performance improved by five second (see diagram, “Gigabit Clients providing the required security and busi-
times that of the baseline 500-MHz Intel® Improve Server Performance”). This ness continuance levels, they must
Pentium® III PC with a Fast Ethernet con- allowed the server to free up resources build the right IT foundation. That foun-
nection. Of course, if you just compared for other tasks much more quickly. dation must be able to handle these
the backup time between the Fast Ethernet For example, a Gigabit Ethernet serv- new demands while enabling users to
and Gigabit Ethernet PCs, the performance er taking 1,452 average client requests work productively.
increase is much more dramatic—but per second also reported only 18 aver- For more and more corporate envi-
users rarely perform one task at a time. age active connections per second. The ronments, the solution is a Gigabit/10
same server taking 569 Fast Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure. With
Gigabit to the Desktop client requests per second showed an pricing for Gigabit Ethernet close to that
Increases Server average of 133 active connections. This of Fast Ethernet, and upgrades easier to
Performance kind of efficient server utilization can be per form than ever before, now is the
The VeriTest evaluation also uncovered a particularly useful for companies consoli- time to make the transition. And Intel
second benefit of Gigabit Ethernet to the dating applications onto a few, more pow- and Cisco offer best-in-class Gigabit/10
desktop—improved server performance. erful servers for better performance and Gigabit Ethernet solutions for the most
VeriTest showed that servers were able easier management. effective upgrade experience. ✜

TO VIEW E-SEMINARS ON GIGABIT ETHERNET, VISIT WWW.GIGABITSOLUTION.COM/ESEMINAR

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN KOCON

†Hyper-Threading Technology requires a computer system with an Intel® Pentium® 4 processor supporting HT Technology and an HT Technology enabled chipset,

BIOS and operating system. Performance will vary depending on the specific hardware and software you use. See http://www.intel.com/info/hyperthreading for
more information including details on which processors support HT Technology.
5
VeriTest, “Combining Gigabit Ethernet and Hyper-Threading Technology in the Desktop for Improved Productivity,” April 2003
Copyright© 2004 Intel Corporation and Cisco Systems. Intel, the Intel logo, Pentium, and Intel SingleDriver are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation
or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Cisco, Cisco Systems, the Cisco Systems logo, and Catalyst are registered trademarks or trademarks of
Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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