NETGEAR FS 524S - Manual (Page 27)

3-3 applications
• The FS524S Switch has two bi-directional stacking ports, which allow load-balanced,
fault-tolerant, redundant connections when cascaded with another FS524S Switch.
Up to eight FS524S Switches can be cascaded, providing up to 192 ports in a single
switched stack. The high-speed stacking ports deliver 4 Gbps of throughput across the
stacking back plane.
To add gigabit connectivity, two FS517TS Switches can be added to the stack to
create one large virtual switch with up to 224 stacked ports and two 1000BASE-T
ports. Since the FS517TS Switch has a single stacking port, adding it to a stack of
FS524S Switches reduces the stacking backplane speed to 2 Gbps and removes
support for load balancing, fault tolerance, and redundancy that a pure FS524S
stack has.
Figure 3-3. Example of Switched Stacking
Internet FS517 TS Switch
FS517 TS Switch
10 Mbps
1000 Mbps
DSL modem
FR314 Router
PS113 Print Server
Printer Printer
PC PC PC MAC
Servers
Servers
100 Mbps
FS524 S Switch
FS524 S Switch