Campus Network Design

Campus Network

A campus network is a building or group of buildings all connected into one enterprise network that consists of many local-area networks (LANs). A campus is generally a portion of a company (or the whole company) that is constrained to a fixed geographic area.

The distinct characteristic of a campus environment is that the company that owns the campus network usually owns the physical wires deployed in the campus. The campus network topology is primarily LAN technology connecting all the end systems within the building. Campus networks generally use LAN technologies, such as Ethernet, Token Ring, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The Enterprise Composite Network Model. As shown in the follow figure.

Example of a Campus Network

A large campus with groups of buildings can also use WAN technology to connect the buildings. Although the wiring and protocols of a campus might be based on WAN technology, they do not share the WAN constraint of the high cost of bandwidth. After the wire is installed, bandwidth is inexpensive because the company owns the wires and there is no recurring cost to a service provider. However, upgrading the physical wiring can be expensive Consequently, network designers generally deploy a campus design optimized for the fastest functional architecture that runs on the existing physical wire. They might also upgrade wiring to meet the requirements of emerging applications. For example, higher-speed technologies��such as Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and ATM as a backbone architecture��and Layer 2 switching provide dedicated bandwidth to the desktop.

The Enterprise Composite Network Model is a blueprint that network designers can use to simplify the complexity of a large internetwork. The blueprint lets you apply a modular, hierarchical approach to network design. With the Enterprise Composite Network Model, you can analyze the functional, logical, and physical components of a network, and thus simplify the process of designing an overall enterprise network.The Enterprise Composite Network Model comprises three major areas, which can each be made up of smaller modules:

Enterprise campus. The enterprise campus includes the modules required to build a robust campus network that provides high availability, scalability, and flexibility. This area contains all the network elements for independent operation within one campus location. An enterprise can have more than one campus.

Enterprise edge. The enterprise edge aggregates the connectivity from the various elements at the edge of an enterprise network. The enterprise edge functional area filters traffic from the edge modules and routes it into the enterprise campus. The enterprise edge contains all the network elements for efficient and secure communication between the enterprise campus and remote locations, business partners, mobile users, and the Internet.