Hierarchy modeling with the networkPipe and pipeComposition tables

A layer 3 connection can be considered as a higher-level connection that is defined in terms of lower-level layer 2 connections. A hierarchy of connections is modeled using the networkPipe and pipeComposition tables, as follows:

Rows in the networkPipe table can be combined in collections using the pipeComposition table

The difference between a network pipe and a simple connection is that a network pipe is an entity. This gives the network pipe the following advantages over a simple connection:

• You can associate attributes to the network pipe, for example by using the entityDetails table.
• A network pipe is able to participate in the relationships available to entities, including containment, connectivity, and dependency relationships.

The pipeComposition table allows a higher-level connection to be defined in terms of lower-level connections

The higher-level and lower-level connections are all represented by rows in the networkPipe table.