How can a single ethernet cable running to a gigabit switch provide multiple connections with gigabit speeds?
In: 179
It can’t but in many cases, that is not the point of a switch.
Imagine that you have 5 computers connected to a switch. Computers 1 and 2 are transfering a large file between each other and are not doing anything else network related. They would be able to transfer the file at 1Gbps.
Let’s say that computers 3 and 4 are downloading a file from computer 5. Since computer 5 only has a 1Gbps port, the total amount of bandwidth computers 3 and 4 can get their files at could not exceed that 1Gbps, total.
But both scenarios could happen at the same time. Each of those transfers would be a total of 2Gbps of bandwidth.
Switches often have a rating called their Backplane bandwidth. This describes how much total throughput the switch is capable of transferring between all of its ports. For example, there are some 48 port switches that might only have 24Gbps of backplane, which means all of the ports total through put can not exceed 24Gbps. There are some switches where ports are in groups, like ports 1-24 have full bandwidth between each other and 25-48 and ful bandwidth between each other, but transfers between the first group and second group might be limited to 10Gbps or something.
Latest Answers