Are network switch data transfer speed limits per port or per device?

When network switches report speeds of say 100 Mbit or 1 Gbit, are they referring to the maximum speed per Ethernet port or is this the physical limit of the switch on all ports? Say for example two users on a network are simultaneously transferring large files, will they be contending against each other for the 100 Mbit or 1 Gbit, or will they each attain these maximum transfer rates?

Solution 1:

• Each port has a maximum speed of e.g. 1 GB/sb in one direction, so sending to two other machines will limit the overall send throughput to this value. It could receive the same amount from other machines because of the full-duplex transfer.
• Switches have a limit of how much traffic the backplane can handle. It is usually lower than the theoretical combined bandwidth (which is the speed of a single port x 2 [full-duplex] x the number of ports of the switch). This backplane limit is usually listed in the specs of the switch.