Monthly Archives: October 2016

Episode 13 – Campus Network Design

We returned to record our thirteenth episode on Sunday October 2, 2016.

 Interesting News and Events

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: