rgheese, a reason for the switch to Ethernet was speed. With Token Ring, the transmission speed of 16 Mbps for any particular workstation was shared among all other workstations within that specific ring. With the new Ethernet technology, workstations can now transmit at 100 Mbps and these NICs costed as much as the 16 Mbps Token Ring NICs. Cost and scalability were the primary reasons behind the move to full Ethernet. Scalability is an important factor because the network engineers plan on upgrading to Gigabit Ethernet in the near future and Fast Ethernet allows this without any major changes to the network. However, Vargheese did tell me that there was less maintenance with Token Ring and fewer collisions when the network was Token Ring. Vargheese also explained to me that the Network Operating System they chose to implement was Windows NT Server 4.0.This was because most of the applications used are made to run on NT, according to Vargheese. From the research and the interviews that I have conducted, it seems that Ethernet is the better choice over Token Ring because of its lower cost, higher scalability, and speed. As for Network Operating Systems, a NOS that addresses issues such as: Architecture, Scalability, Number of Clients supported, Network printing Network protocols, Network services, Security, and Database support needs to be taken into consideration. ...
