Models: Understanding the Cisco Hierarchical Network Model

You might be thinking, Jeremy, you're crazy, and I kind of am, for using stackable layer 3 switches for
500 employees. Wouldn't you be at the chassis level by that point? And I'll tell you, in reality, most
people are in the chassis environment. They are buying the Cisco 6500 switches with modular blah
blah blah dual power supplies, and all that. But I have been in a heck of a lot of budget-minded
businesses who are like, do I really need that?

I've used stackable switches for companies of 500 users on the network with their iPhones, and their
Androids, and their tablets, and it works just fine as long as you're using switches that can scale to
that kind of capacity like the Cisco 3750 that does.

By the time you reach this point, you've started to segment it off, and say, OK, you know, PC’s don't
plug directly into the distribution layer, because this is where I've got my security taking place, my
ACLs, my quality of service, my routing, my VLANs.

And you decide about the connection between Access and Distribution layer. This is a huge, huge
decision-- whether or not you want to go layer 2 or layer 3. So much more to be said on this, but the
high level view, whether you want to use Spanning Tree Protocol to manage these links and
essentially block one of them, because it has to stop loops from happening or whether you want to
convert these to layer 3 routed links and use them all. Well, that means all Access layer switches
have to be 3750s or layer 3 capable, which immediately pops the budget for a lot of people in mind.
But layer 3 is faster. It's safer, et cetera

But it may require a complete network design. Oh my goodness, I'm already talking about it. We'll
get into that in a little while. So this is where your packet spends most of its time. And this is actually
where most companies will stop. And that's simply because most companies don't grow to
Enterprise scales and have campuses and satellite offices and everything else.

Where there is no "distinct core layer". The distribution and core combined together. And essentially
everything connects like this. I mean, you can scale a network like this into the thousands of users.

Where you will typically bring up a distinct core layer is when you go with mini multiple buildings.
Mini means I would say once you exceed three building.
And you connect all these things together like that. Fiber line trenched under the street. Then we
buy the building after that, because toothpicks are taking off like crazy. And you've got all these
switches. And you do the same kind of model. But wait, in order to do this right, I got a cross connect
this. Because when you buy this building and this building and this building, and you keep buying all
these buildings in this little campus, it becomes this full mesh nightmare of everything having to
connect to everything, and you can't manage it.

The core layer is a really fast cross connect, usually really expensive fiber optics switches that are
running there, but really they do nothing. They do nothing. They do nothing, but connect all your
buildings together and act as that centralized point of connection so you don't have to connect every
building to every building.
Now I know some of you might be thinking, well, where do your firewalls go, and your internet
connection, and your router to the branch offices, and all that? Those devices connect right into the
distribution layer.

Remember that core just being that really fast cross connect for your other buildings. The
distribution layer being where all the routing and access control and everything like that takes place,
so you can have your redundant internet module that comes in there and connects in to, I'll call it a
DMZ kind of link into the distribution layer.

Instead of just having cross connects everywhere and everything connected to everything hoping
that you don't have a loop, you have an ordered three-tier system, access, distribution, and core that
you can follow in any network environment to distinctly say what the devices do and what devices
should connect to what.