Episode 13 – Campus Network Design

We returned to record our thirteenth episode on Sunday October 2, 2016. Interesting News and Events Ethernet and NBASE-T Alliances to Host Joint Plugfest to Drive Widespread Deployment of Next Generation 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps Ethernet Technology The 2016 Ethernet Roadmap EXTREME NETWORKS AGREES TO ACQUIRE WIRELESS LAN BUSINESS FROM ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES BROCADE COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF RUCKUS WIRELESS United States set to Hand Over Control of the Internet to ICANN Today Roundtable Discussion – Campus Network Design How to build a Campus Network How many devices will be on the network ? What kind of Devices do you need ? Switches , Core (maybe distribution) Access L3 Routing , classic Routers, L3 Switches, Firewalls WLAN Access Points, Controller Wan Optimizer Infrastructure for VoIP What tools are you using? How to build a redundant campus network: Layer 2 Spanning tree, Multi Chassis Link Aggregation , LAG/LACP Stacking, like Cisco Cat 3k line, VSS technology or Avaya Switches, Juniper virtual Chassis , HP IRF virtual Switch Clustering , Cisco vPC, Avaya SMLT, Cisco VSS Layer 3 First Hop redundancy Problem: VRRP HSRP RSMLT Choose the right technology for your needs / usecase. Protect your Network: Loop prevention STP, BPDU Guard DHCP Snooping Rate Limiting Access control Use a seperate management network for your network devices. Use encryption for management such as SSH, SNMPv3 and HTTPS Preconfig / Templates / Provisioning: Switches Ports VLANs Out of Band Management Opengear Cradlepoint What tools are you using? I recently needed a small compact remote jumpbox that i could use to help isolate a problem I was experiencing in a physically remote network. I employed a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B with Anker USB 3.0 to RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter which allowed me to use the small computer as both a jumpbox and a remote packet capture solution. I was able to manage the computer remotely over the built-in Ethernet adapter and then used the Anker (it’s actually a Realtek chipset) Ethernet adapter to capture the problem frames coming from a SPAN port using tcpdump with some capture filters. You’ll need to be careful of how much traffic you throw at the little computer but I was really impressed with how well the solution worked. What tools are you using? References: Peter Jones – Tech Field Day Campus Network Design Models