[c-nsp] Campus Network Design advice

[Chris Gauthier]

My former employer had NO redunancy. Not in the core, not to the edge. It was physically and logically an extended star. They did not know how to properly implement STP and the sr. techs never asked for input from the junior techs (which I was one of). Also, one of the Sr techs created a L2 loop (in the Foundry default vlan) trying to add a dedicated path for one department, but didn't know she did that. Took my campus down for 3 days. Anyhow, enough b$tching about her. 

The basic premise of the network was the L3 between the core L3 switches (1 per campus) and L2 from the L3 switch to the edge. We used vlans for segregation and all vlans were homed at the L3 switch. It really wasn't a bad design, if they could have implemented RSTP and had physically redundant links between distribution layer switches. 

Remember, L3 core was iunterconnected in logical mesh through a metro ethernet fiber ring. Gig fiber ran was the backbone for each campus, 

Hope this helps a bit? 

Chris 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Josh Higham" <jhigham at epri.com> 
To: "Chris Gauthier" <chris at k7sle.com> 
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 9:15:23 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 
Subject: RE: [c-nsp] Campus Network Design advice 

> at the distribution and access layers. Worked great. In the 
> extended star topology that others implemented (before I came 
> on board), the powers that be did not use STP. Generally, 
> things were acceptable. I wanted RSTP, but that's a gripe for 
> another day. OSPF was the routing algorithm. 2 of the L3 
> switches interfaced with the border routers. 

Was there no redundancy to the distribution (no STP), or am I missing 
something here? Opinions about going to L3 all the way? I've 
engineered for it (no spanning vlans) but wonder how important of a move 
it really is. 

Just wondering, 
Josh