Meanwhile, the corporate space has also seen its share of transitions. In the last
decade, more and more business activities have moved online, including sales, support,
accounting, and training. As businesses have expanded their operations, the need
for reliable data sharing and access across dispersed MAN/WAN regions has surged.
In turn, these developments have driven up corporate bandwidth requirements??”and
stringencies??”as embodied by applications such as LAN extension, storage area networks
(SAN), and virtual private networks (VPN) (see also ???Sections 8.5.1??? and ???8.5.2???).
A noteworthy trend here is the reversal of the ???80/20??? traffic rule, where nearly 80
percent of traffic now heads into the network core. In the past, corporations have used
separate technologies for their internal communication needs. For example, voice calls
were supported by TDM branch exchanges whereas data services (e-mail, ftp, and Web)
were heavily Ethernet-based. However businesses are now moving toward converged
setups that leverage Ethernet??™s cost-effectiveness, port scalability, and ease-of-use/
maintenance. Some telling examples include the migration of TDM voice to Voice over
IP (VoIP) and new packet video services.
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