Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/58400
article title than 200 milliseconds and will often report outages that last more than one minute. There are many configuration techniques and hardware considerations to minimize the failover time between resilient network elements. LAN Resiliency: At the heart of a good LAN design is selecting a vendor that can provide high-performing switches with a large mean time between failures (MTBF). Vendors sometimes don't make their MTBF numbers public, so you might have to ask. Chassis-based switches with passive backplanes and dual processors will give you the best uptime. For switch-to-switch connectivity, dual connections between switches are ideal, with each connection preferably connected to separate blades within a chassis. Connections between switches and routers, firewalls and other network-based devices should also be dual-connected if possible. Try to avoid connecting unmanaged consumer-grade switches to the business- class switches. While these switches might offer a cheap and quick fix for areas that need additional port locations, they often exclude key features (such as a Spanning Tree Protocol to avoid loops within the network). Improperly connected consumer-grade switches can easily bring down a network. Additionally, servers should be dual-connected within data centers if they don't have a counterpart server connected elsewhere in the network. Quick failover times on the LAN also ensure the network stays invisible. Spanning Tree offers good protection from looping and will move packets around ILTA White Paper 7