The increase in speed of PC's and the growing amount of data and applications caused the network to be severely bottlenecked. Access on the network was at the same fast Ethernet speed as the backbone and servers.
We staged the upgrade by making a backbone change immediately and implementing a small Gigabit switch. This relieved the pressure until funding in the new year made possible a new core backbone switch/router. Virtual Networks where created allowing some critical legacy applications and campus handhelds to perform better.