Enterprise Network Architecture Options – Simplified Campus Design

The simplified campus design relies on switch clustering such as the virtual switching system (VSS) and stacking technologies such as StackWise, where multiple switches are treated as a single logical switch.

These technologies can be applied to any of the layers in the network design to simplify them.

Simplifying the network through the use of clustering technologies keeps the design simple, with fewer individual devices to manage.

Implementing clustering can remove the need for first hop redundancy protocols in some designs, and etherchannel can be used across a logical switch to utilise links that were blocked before by spanning tree.

In a logical switch set up VLANs can be distributed across physical devices with the one logical switch too.