Therefore, data centers may use bleeding-edge technologies that are not found in the campus network, such as FabricPath, VXLAN, and Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). Over the past few years, data center architectures have become more complex and require sophistication not required in the campus network due to high-availability, low-latency, and high-performance requirements. Today, the infrastructure that interconnects server farms, application servers, and computing nodes are clearly distinguished from campus networks and referred to as data centers. Originally, prior to around 2005, the term campus network and its architectures were relevant for application server farms and computing infrastructure as well. In different terms, the campus network provides for connectivity to company applications and tools that reside in a data center for end users. Intranet resources may be company web pages, call center applications, file and print services, and almost anything end users connect to from their computer. Introduction to Cisco switches and their associated architectureĪ campus network describes the portion of an enterprise infrastructure that interconnects end devices such as computers, laptops, and wireless access points to services such as intranet resources or the Internet.Specifically, this chapter focuses on the following two high-level topics:
This is useful knowledge when designing and building campus networks. This chapter begins the journey of exploring campus network design fundamentals by focusing on a few core concepts around network design and structure and a few details about the architecture of Cisco switches. Therefore, the persons responsible for building this network need to deploy sound fundamentals and design principles for the campus networks to function adequately and provide the necessary stability, scalability, and resiliency necessary to sustain interconnectivity with a 100 percent uptime.
Often, you may even gain access by using a portable device such as an Apple iPhone connected on a corporate Wi-Fi to reach applications such as e-mail, calendaring, or instant messaging over a campus network. Every time you go to an office to work or go to class at school, college, or university, you will use a campus network to access critical applications, tools, the Internet, and so on over wired or wireless connections.