Large-Scale IP Network Solutions (CCIE Professional Development)

Hierarchy Issues

Just as the Internet hierarchy had to adapt to accommodate an increase in players, so has the enterprise network. Early data networks facilitated the basic requirement of communication between terminals and a central mainframe. The need for a simple hierarchy, from terminal to IBM cluster controllers to front-end processors, was readily apparent from this basic requirement. In today's world of peer-to-peer networking, however, the reasons for network hierarchy and its inner workings are subtler, yet just as important for successful network design.

Figure 4-2 presents the high-level network architecture developed in Chapter 1. Notice that the network backbone (also called the network core—the terms core and backbone are equivalent) ...