The Gigabit Ethernet Alliance believes that in the first few years as an industry standard, Gigabit Ethernet is most likely to be implemented on campus networks and within building networks that require more bandwidth between repeaters, routers, switches, and servers. The Gigabit Ethernet Alliance is an organization of 120 vendors dedicated to promoting the standardization of Gigabit Ethernet.
The Gigabit Ethernet white paper, which is posted on the alliance's World-Wide Web site (http://www.gigabit-ethernet.org), describes five upgrade scenarios. All of these upgrade scenarios offer a relatively easy path to Gigabit Ethernet. However, three of the upgrade scenarios stand out as being particularly simple:
Implementing any of these upgrade scenarios enables you to boost bandwidth with minimal impact on your company's network. That is, if you chose one of the three easy paths to Gigabit Ethernet, you could continue using the same network management and desktop applications; the same network interface boards in your company's workstations; and the same cabling system, assuming that you are using multimode or singlemode fiber for the links.