Chapter 10. Local Network SolutionsSAP on the Internal Information Superhighway

The network infrastructure covering a company's property is called the local area network (LAN). In most cases, the company owns all components from the cabling to the connecting devices. Today's LAN technologies provide extremely high bandwidths for an area covering several miles.

As discussed before, the support of TCP/IP is mandatory for SAP client/server connectivity. Therefore, proprietary terminal network equipment has to be replaced within an SAP implementation. Because of the mission-critical character of SAP and the central position in an enterprise information infrastructure, existing IP-ready local area network infrastructures should also be closely examined with respect to performance, high availability, and total cost of ownership.