Which benefit is realized by using a fabric extender?

While FEX often uses high-speed uplinks to the parent switch, its primary benefit is not generally improved data rates for local switching, as it does not perform local switching.

Fabric extenders do not reduce routing complexity because they are not routing devices; they simply forward all traffic to a parent switch for processing.

Fabric extenders typically do not perform local switching; instead, all traffic is forwarded to the parent switch, so 'cut-through local, nonblocking switching' is not a characteristic of the FEX itself.

A fabric extender (FEX) operates as a remote line card for its parent switch, meaning all management, control, and data plane processing are centralized on the parent switch, simplifying operations.