The switch itself will have a 'bandwidth', the speed at which the backplane can transfer. Also the architecture of the switch, Store and Forward or Cut Through will affect sustained transfer rates.I have a small network at home there are only 4 PC's networks and I've noticed that if all 4 are working it only requires one to be downloading a big movie file and the whole network starts to lag and get slower and slower, even the transfer of files from one PC to another can slow down.
Large networks use careful planning, continual monitoring and QOS / bandwidth control to keep things under control.From this I do wonder how larger networks survive.
For instance, an application that moves big amounts of data may not run on the actual PC, instead it may be a Terminal server session back to a powerful machine in the data centre so that all that is crossing the link is screen and mouse/keyboard data.
There are heaps of ways to improve performance without throwing bandwidth at it, it just requires analysis of what is actually happening.
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