Overview

The campus network is the portion of the enterprise network infrastructure that provides access to network communication services and resources to end users and devices that are spread over a single geographic location. The end users in a campus network may be dispersed more widely than in a single local area network (LAN) but are usually not as scattered as they would be in a wide area network (WAN). The key items that must be kept in mind while designing a campus network are the management, modularity, and resiliency in a network. All the nodes in a campus network are interconnected by optical fiber media that takes advantage of the 1/10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) technology. In most cases, Wi-Fi hot spots make up the user end of the network, for example, in universities, schools, and offices.

A typical network is segregated into three layers: the core, aggregation, and access layers (also known as a hierarchical architecture). This document lists the different design architectures that Ruckus offers using its high-end enterprise switches to increase resiliency, as well as scalability, while reducing network complexity and network touch points.