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Aggregates data received from the AL before transmitting to the CL for routing.
Controls traffic flow using policies and delineates broadcast domains with VLANs defined at the
AL.
VLANs allow traffic segmentation (separate subnetworks).
DL switches are typically high-performance devices that have high availability and redundancy
to ensure reliability.
Note: smaller networks often combine the distribution and core layers.
Redundancy:
Performance:
Properly designed networks can achieve near wire speed btwn all devices.
Security:
AL switches can be configured to provide control over which devices are allowed to connect to
the network.
More advanced security policies available at the DL.
Some AL switches support L3 functionality, but it is usually the job of the DL switches, because
they can process it much more efficiently.
Manageability:
Changes can be repeated across all devices in a layer because they presumably perform the same
functions.
Deployment of new switches is simplified because configs can be copied with few modifications.
Maintainability:
Because of their modularity and scalability, hierarchical networks are easy to maintain.
This also means these networks are less expensive.
With other designs, manageability becomes increasingly complicated as the network grows.
Network Diameter:
Redundancy:
Voice networks contain isolated phone lines running to a PBX (Private BDXT Exchange) switch
located in a Telco wiring closet PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network).
Telco closet often separate fm the data and video closets.
New phone > a new line to the PBX.
Using a properly designed hierarchical network voice lines can be added with little or no impact.
Now that networks can accommodate the Bandwidth it makes sense to converge.
Analysis Tools:
Data stores can be servers, SANs, NAS, tape bu units, or any other storage device or component.
Considers both client-server and server-server tfc.
Client-server tfc typically traverses multiple switches.
BW aggregation and switch forwarding rates can help eliminate bottlenecks for this type of tfc.
Some server apps generate high volumes btwn servers.
These server shouls be located close to each other (i.e. secured data centers).
Tfc across data center switches is typically very high.
Requires higher performing switches.
Topology Diagrams:
Switch Features:
Stackable Switches:
Can be interconnected using a special backplane cable that provides high-bandwidth throughput
btwn the switches.
Cisco's StackWise technology allows you to interconnect up to nine switches using fully
redundant backplane connections.
Stacked switches effectively operate as a single larger switch.
Desirable where fault tolerance and BW availability are critical and a modular switch is too
costly.
Performance:
Port Density:
Forwarding Rates:
Link Aggregation:
Determine if there are enough ports to aggregate to support the required BW.
E.G. GbE 24-port switch could generate up to 24 Gbps.
If it is connected to the network by a single cable, it can only forward 1 Gbps to the rest of the
network.
That results in 1/24th wire speed for each of the 24 devices.
Link aggregation helps to reduce these bottlenecks by allowing up to 8 ports to be grped,
providing up to 8 Gbps.
With multiple 10GbE uplinks very high throughput rates can be achieved.
Cisco uses the term EtherChannel = aggregated ports.
Layer 3 Functions:
Security Policies:
Quality of Service:
DL switches need to maintain the priorities of tfc coming fm the AL switches that have
implemented QoS.
If not all the devices support QoS, the benefits will be reduced -. poor performance and quality.
DL switches are under high demand.
They need redundancy for adequate availability.
DL switches are typically implemented in pairs.
Recommended that they support multiple, hot swappable pwr supplies.
Finally, they need to support link aggregation and high-bandwidth aggregated links back to the
core.
Miscellaneous: