Switching

[peteryouhannafawzy]

I need to know when to use Switches with port speed 10/100 and 10/100/1000.?

[Leo Laohoo]

If your clients and LAN are 1 Gbps capable then why use 10/100 switches?

The only time you'd buy 10/100 Mbps switches is when you've got funding issues.  

[peteryouhannafawzy]

IF my client will use IP telephones it will differ to use 10/100 from 10/100/100 ?

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

A VoIP phone will happily run even on 10 Mbps, but many VoIP phones allow you to connect a downstream PC.  It's for the PC that you'll want 100 Mbps or gig.  Which depends on what your phone supports, and if only 100 Mbps, whether you want a switch that can also support gig for other ports or later phone upgrades.  (BTW, we've found some phones that bottleneck performance to PC.  I.e. their internal pass through doesn't deliver full port bandwidth throughput.)

[ndemers]

Switching technology can follow an over subscription method where the access layer bandwidth for end clients is more than the uplink port.

General Rule

Lower bandwidth speeds should be at the end clients and the higher bandwidth should be used progressively higher as you go towards the center of the network.  Whatever the lowest bandwidth speed is should be at the bottom of the hierarchy.  doesn't matter if its 10/100 or 10/100/1000.

Imagine it was reversed and you have a client that had 1 1GB link.  Its trying to use that 1GB link and the uplink port towards core network is 100MB.   Are you going to be able to run at 1GB all the way out?  No because of the bottleneck.

Exceptions to Rule

If you have a server, media center, unique technology that requires higher bandwidth then this is an acceptable change.  

Does this answer your question or did you have a more specific question?