Cisco LAN Switching Fundamentals

Chapter 11. Design and Implementation Best Practices

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Layer 3 designs

• Building blocks

• Campus design

• Catalyst Supervisor and switch fabric redundancy

One goal of every network design is to provide users as much bandwidth as possible, as often as possible. Sounds easy, right? Network administrators often use terms such as highly available, redundant, scalable, and resilient to describe their network designs. To make good on the implied promises of these terms, administrators should adopt certain best practices.

Many long-time Cisco customers respond to the latest switching design best practices by saying “Just a few years ago I was told to switch where possible and route where I must, now I am told to route ...