Cisco Networking Simplified, Second Edition

Chapter . Campus Networks and Hierarchical Design

Building Networks for Ease of Use

Campus, as it applies to networking, typically describes the routers, switches, network appliances, and servers that make up the networking infrastructure for a set of buildings located in close proximity. A campus can be the manufacturing site of a large corporation, the headquarters for a bank, or a college campus.

A design goal for campus networks is to separate buildings, floors, workgroups, and server farms into smaller Layer 3 groups to prevent network faults from affecting large populations of users. Layer 3 routers provide natural boundaries against debilitating network problems such as broadcast storms and loops. Over time, the hierarchical approach to network ...