Switch It On

When your business is growing, your technology needs to growwith it. You not only have to consider the computers your employeeswill need, but also how they'll integrate with your companynetwork. The humble Ethernet switch is the key connection betweenyour workers and your network. The right Ethernet switch willoptimize your network performance, while maintaining the investmentin equipment you already have. If you're suffering from poornetwork performance, a switch might help clear up yourproblems.

The big news on the Ethernet scene is the arrival of a newgeneration of relatively cheap switches capable of transferring agigabit worth of data per second. These 1000Mbps bad boys are thewave of the future for networking. They're not only faster thantheir 100Mbps and 10Mbps predecessors, but also backward compatibleso you can upgrade your network as your budget allows. Most of theswitches in our chart support gigabit connections. They cost only afew dollars more than the equivalent slower switches from previousgenerations, but will give you all the bandwidth you'll needfor the foreseeable future.