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Appendix C
Optimizing your Network
Introduction
In order for rich media to be an effective tool for your business
you must first provision your network to support streaming.
Below are some rules of thumb to ensure that video streaming
will enhance your company’s performance without hurting your
network performance.
Switches are always better than Hubs
Hubs contain only one collision plane, rendering hub-based
networks unproductive because of their inadequacy in handling
collisions. A collision is an Ethernet event that occurs when two
Ethernet frames collide. Switches, on the other hand, are
comprised of ports. Each port is a separate collision plane.
Thus, only those machines connected to the same port share a
collision plane, reducing the number of collisions and
increasing available resources. Moreover, Level III enabled
switches support IP multicasting using IGMP (Internet Group
Management Protocol) across LAN and VLAN spaces without
interfering with the productivity of the rest of the users
connected to the network.
Whenever possible, separate Departments
This is especially important in large organizations. If your
network is segmented well and each segment is connected to a
common backbone, maximum utilization on one segment will