Compare Access, Distribution, and Core switches: understand their roles, features, and differences in enterprise network hierarchy. Make informed network design decisions. If data packets are highly crowded at. There is a tendency to discount the network as simple plumbing — to believe that the only design considerations are the size and the length of the pipes or the speeds and feeds of the links, and to dismiss the rest as unimportant. This section describes the options, requirements and recommendations for each Distributed Switch Model. Introduction: The Hierarchical Network Model In today's complex IT environments, network design follows a structured approach to ensure. The term campus LAN refers to a LAN network that spans a single geographic location, such as a building or university campus.