The Design Of Campus Network

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The campus network is that portion of computing infrastructure which provides network communication services when accessed and resources to students, staff and faculty. It also provides services for devices spread over a geographical location. It is spread over buildings, or group of buildings within the geographical area. The campus network acts as the core or backbone which provides interconnectivity between other parts of overall network within the campus. There can be multiple campus sites distributed worldwide which provides user access to its local backbone network. The backbone network often interconnects the network access, data center and Local Area Network (LAN) portions of the campus network.

The campus backbone connects buildings within the network. Centralized server is connected to the campus backbone. It provides server resources to the end users such as print, file, e-mail, application, and so on. The campus backbone should support network monitoring, security, logging, troubleshooting and other function. Therefore network management is one of the important component of the campus backbone network.

The data center is a facility used to keep Servers, computing systems and its components of the network. Examples servers are used to keep database, house mail etc of the campus network.

The LANs of the network contains switches, routers, and others equipments used to interconnect a main building to other branch buildings and interconnect multiple sites. In large networks, connecting data centers requires higher bandwidth links. LAN technologies, such as Token Ring, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet are utilized for connecting the campus buildings.

A large Campus network with group of buildings can use Wide Area Network (WAN) technology to interconnect the buildings.

Internet Edge is part of the network that comprises of switches, routers, firewalls, and network devices which interconnect the network of the campus to the Internet.

Hierarchical Campus Network

The network designer uses the hierarchical network model which provides the framework that is used by the designer to ensure the network is flexible, easily implemented and troubleshoot.

Hierarchical network model consists of three layers shown in the figure:

Access Layer: The campus network is accessed by local and remote users through access layer. It provides connectivity for hosts and devices.

Distribution Layer: It interconnects the local networks. A distribution layer is a boundary between access and core layers.

Core Layer: The backbone or core layer provides with high speed network connectivity and transportation of distribution layer devices.

Design of Campus Network

Local area network has been enhanced due to its vast use of LAN switching at data link layer to increase performance. It also provides with more bandwidth requirement to meet networking applications. LAN switches are implemented in campus networks which provide increasing bandwidth for better performance and better throughput for local servers. LAN switches are deployed toward the network’s edge in the wiring closets. By this design shared concentrator hubs are replaced by switches where the end users are provided with higher bandwidth connections.

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The network in the Layer 3 uses switches to interconnect workgroups and to provide services such as security, traffic management and quality of service (QoS). Switched networks are integrated by routing which provides stability, security and control to build scalable network.

In Layer 2 switching is done by LAN switches, whereas in Layer 3 routers are used for networking. These two functions of networking are integrated to common platforms. One example is multilayer switches which provide both Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality.

To build good campus network various LAN technologies used are:

Routing: LANs in campus network are interconnected through routing. It is done either by switching in Layer 3 or routing Layer 3 switches.

Gigabit Ethernet: Gigabit Ethernet belongs to Ethernet family of networking which has data transfer rate of 1 Gigabit per second. It provides increased speed over Fast Ethernet. The network backbone is supported with high bandwidth capacity through Gigabit Ethernet.

LAN switching: There are two switching technologies implemented:

Ethernet switching: The Ethernet segment in the network for each connection is provided by Ethernet switching. It is done through Layer 2 Ethernet switching. This provides the base of the network.

Token Ring: The Token Ring technology is implemented here, but it offers the same functionalities of Ethernet switching. Token Ring is used has source route bridge.

ATM switching: Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching offers higher bandwidth. Voice, video and data are obtained by high speed switching.

Routing Protocols

Routers control the broadcasting of information to other nodes in a network. The information exchange of network destinations takes place by several routing protocol. Routers are used to forward the packets from one destination to other. This information is exchanged by routers. The lists of routing protocols are given below:

For TCP/IP routing:

Routing Information Protocol (RIP)

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (ISIS)

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)

Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM)

For AppleTalk routing:

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)

Routing Table Maintenance Protocol (RTMP)

Criteria

The network design of the campus is done bases of the following properties:

The processing speed of the various devices used in the network.

The number of ports connected in various network devices such as routers, switches and so on.

The amount of memory needed for operating successful campus network.

Throughput of packets in the network measured per second.

The various technologies of LAN and WAN used in building the network.

Amount of latency measured when the data is relayed from the device.

Media support. (Cabling of the campus network)

Configuration of the network should be easy.

Network management and Security.

The time measured when failure of a system which occurs during some operation is called Mean time between failures (MTBF).

The time required to recovery from the system failure is called Mean time to recovery (MTTR).

Packet filtering.

QoS features supported to enhance the network.

Power supply should be redundant.

Now criteria for bridges and switches used in the network design:

Support for bridging technologies in the network such as remote and transparent bridging, and so on.

Number of MAC addresses.

Port security.

Support for Adaptive switching in the network.

Support for VLAN technologies.

Multicast application supported. (Example Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) used to handle multicast management on the network.)

The switching and routing tables require memory.

Criteria for routers used in the network design:

Support for routing protocols in the network.

Multicast application support within the network.

Support for network layer protocols.

Encryption of data.

Advanced switching and queuing system.

Features for routers optimization.

Criteria for wireless points used in the network design:

Virtual LAN support.

Ethernet ports uplink speed.

Speed of the wireless devices.

Support services such as Network Address Translation (NAT), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and IP routing.

The range of the wireless antenna.

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) used for security enhancement.

Implementation of Robust Security Network (RSN).

Support for encryption.

Each user is given a dynamic key and unique key and support for Message integrity check (MIC).

User authentication.

One-time password support.

Publicly Secure Packet Forwarding (PSPF) within the network has to be supported.