The "highway" of the network. Its sole purpose is to switch traffic as fast as possible. It avoids complex packet manipulation to maintain maximum speed.
Moving away from "trusting everyone inside the building" to a model where every user and device must be continuously verified. network design
High availability is non-negotiable. Designers use dual-homing (connecting a switch to two upstream devices) and protocols like STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) or LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) to ensure that if one cable or switch fails, the network stays live. The "highway" of the network