Design Guide

Americas Headquarters:

Cisco Systems, Inc., 170 West Tasman Drive, San Jose, CA 95134-1706 USA

LAN Baseline Architecture Overview—Branch

Office Network

This document provides guidance on how to design a local area network (LAN) for a Business Ready

Branch or autonomous Business Ready Office where corporate services such as voice, video, and data

are converged onto a single office network.

This document provides an overview of LAN architecture. Because of the numerous combinations of

features, platforms, and customer requirements that make up an office design, this version of the design

guide focuses on various LAN design discussions for voice and data services without making specific

design recommendations.

This document is targeted at Cisco system engineers and other personnel who assist in pre-sales design

of branch or commercial office networks. An external, CCO-ready version will be made available at a

later date.

LAN Services Overview

LAN services provide connectivity to end devices into the corporate network within the office. With the

convergence of services onto a single network infrastructure, devices such as computers, telephones,

surveillance cameras, cash registers, kiosks, and inventory scanners all require connection to the

corporate network via the LAN. This assortment of devices requires simplified connectivity tailored to

the demands of each device. For example, devices such as IP telephones or cameras may be powered via

the LAN switch, automatically assigned an IP address, and be placed in a virtual LAN (VLAN) to

securely segment them from the other devices. Wireless access points may be used to provide secure

mobile access for laptop computers, scanning devices, wireless IP phones, or kiosks. These are just a

few examples of the LAN services that are used in the Business Ready Branch or Office solution.

In addition to providing the integrated voice, video and data services for the employees, branch offices

also require guest network access, and in some cases should support demilitarized zones (DMZs). The

guest access can be for partners or customers, and guest access includes both wired and wireless access.

Regardless of the presence of DMZ, security in branch offices is a key element of branch LAN services.

The LAN must be protected against malicious attacks, and the users accessing the corporate network

must be authorized/authenticated.