Design | Progressive Office Cabling

Planning – Network Design Requirements

5 Aug 2018

Office Cabling ,Network Cabling After receiving the requirements for a network, it is common for designers to prioritize their implementation and integrate them into the format of the design. Occasionally, they initially rely on best practices, instead of focusing on planning. This is unfortunate because the planning process often leads to discovering multiple viable design solutions.

Designers should first make business-centric decisions determining either the solution or design that supports the company’s objectives or strategy. Although it is advisable to follow best practices for network design, reliance on them is more typical on occasions when a network is being designed from the ground up, which is usually not the case for large service providers and enterprises.

Let’s consider optimizing office buildings as a comparison. The standard procedure for civil engineers and architects is to perform an evaluation of a building by identifying existing problems, understanding the organization’s goals, and gathering business requirements. Afterwards, they begin optimizing the office building’s existing features. As examples, this may involve replacing the elevators or expanding the lobby.

The above is similar to the procedure for revamping network design. There will always be faulty designs that were poorly planned. Sometimes they are unable to scale, or adopt emerging technologies, or adapt to changing business conditions. Thus, designers must first make a comprehensive study of the existing business problems, IT requirements, and network design. Next, they should develop solutions that will optimize the present architecture. This may entail redesigning several components of the network. It can also require the addition of a new data center.

In order to choose the correct design choices and technologies, network designers must gather the necessary information that will allow them to make a sound analysis during the planning stage. This also lets them correctly determine the new requirements that will support the company’s business goals. At this point, network designers typically utilize the decision tree and the decision matrix for easing and simplifying the process.

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voip-phone, Network Cabling, Data Cabling

Constraints of Network Design

17 Jul 2018

Stu Kushner

voip-phone, Network Cabling, Data Cabling The constraints of network design are existing factors that cannot be altered, often impacting architecture and functional requirements. These constraints can have a significant effect on network design and must be taken into account. Below are the most familiar design constraints that must be addressed by a network designer.

Cost

Cost is certainly a limiting factor that must always be considered during the design process.

Experienced & Expensive Staff

In order to quickly adapt to new technology, a company may decide to hire technical employees who are expert in the new technologies, but cost more in salary. The greater operational costs for their expertise may exceed the benefits from the decreased TCO (total cost of ownership) derived from the latest technology.

Expertise of Staff

It may be the case that the most efficient, cost-saving design with state-of-the-art technology was presented by the network design team. However, the current staff may not have the experience or know-how to implement this new technology.

Infrastructure Equipment

In cases where an organization has not planned how to replace legacy network devices, the situation can lead to severe limitations on network design. This is quite apparent when new protocols and features cannot be supported.

Location

This is a difficult kind of constraint because location involves limitations that have an indirect effect on design. To illustrate, a rural site might be in a region where fiber infrastructure is not present and wireless is the only connectivity.

Staff Training

Due to the lack of experience of technical staff in a newer technology, issues may take longer to detect and repair until they are adequately trained. This will lead to longer downtimes that render a data center nonfunctional, resulting in business losses.

Time

When choosing an architecture or technology, time becomes a constraint when the time frame plays a part in remaining on schedule for the completion of the project.

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Technical & Application Requirements of Network Design – Part 2

30 Jun 2018

Stu Kushner

Office Cabling Network Cabling As discussed in Part 1, contemporary network design requires meeting the technical and application requirements of ever expanding and evolving IT and business demands.

Part 2 will continue discussing Application Requirements.

Importance of User Expectation

Networks or IT technologies that are unable to achieve a satisfactory level user expectation or QoE (quality of experience) will be considered to have failed meeting an important business goal. As a result, they will be considered a cost, rather than tools that allow a business to succeed.

A network’s design must take into account how a satisfactory level of user experience will be attained. From the point of view of a user, QoE when utilizing services and applications will determine their level of satisfaction.

The deployment of services and applications before taking into account their features and network requirements will result in a failure to achieve business goals.

To illustrate, a financial services company that wants to provide a video communication application to their customer service representatives, but fails to secure enough bandwidth, will likely frustrate their reps and displease their customers when calls are dropped or interrupted because of excessive latency. Thus, their corporate goal of differentiating themselves from their competitors will be a failure until they meet the network requirements of the application.

Evaluation of Application Requirements

Network designers should keep in mind their responses to the key questions below for the evaluation of application requirements:

What are the application’s features and characteristics?

What is the length of time the application needs to reset its session or state after losing connectivity?

What is the amount of network traffic that is required by the application?

How important is the application to the organization and what is the service level it will require to function properly?

For its compliance with industry regulations and company security polices, will the application have separation requirements?

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The Principles of Network Design – Part 4

29 Mar 2018

Stu Kushner

Office Cabling Network Cabling As discussed in Part 3, a company’s network design should help the organization meet its Business Requirements, give it Business Continuity capability, and provide the adequate Elasticity to allow it to cope with business developments. Part 4 will cover How IT Enables Business Innovation.

How IT Enables Business Innovation

Modern businesses use IT technology to innovate and improve their customer service. When an emerging technology can enable a company to be more competitive in the marketplace and raise customer satisfaction, it will be typically acquired by the business, and its features will be integrated into its network.

A great example of the above is the rapid growth of cloud-based data centers, which are allowing new companies to drastically decrease their capital expenditure and allowing their scaling at will. However, they will still require a high performing data center that has the qualities of flexibility and reliability.

Requirements

A company’s industry and how it began will help a network designer to quickly grasp its underlying requirements. It is obvious banking will certainly need information security. Thus, the network design for banking has to provide the required security capabilities to be adopted by the industry. Moreover, a designer must keep in mind the industry’s standards that are applicable to IT infrastructure and services.

Priorities

Every organization makes priorities that revolve around its business objectives. They should be factored in an IT network infrastructure’s planning and design. Keeping in mind a company’s priorities will help produce a network that successfully supports its business activities.

Suppose an organization’s network for business communication requires (as numbered in importance of priority): 1) collaboration, 2) interactivity, and 3) mobile access. Accordingly, the first two features required must be provided prior to satisfying the third requirement.

In conclusion, a network designer must be cognizant of a company’s business priorities in order to be able to successfully create a network that serves its needs.

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Network Cabling,Installations Washington D.C.

The Principles of Network Design – Part 1

15 Feb 2018

Stu Kushner

Network Cabling,Installations Washington D.C. Today’s network design must be capable of providing the technical requirements of expanding and evolving IT and business demands. As a result, the task is growing in complexity and difficulty for both service providers and enterprises. The challenge is even steeper when dealing with a legacy infrastructure that must be upgraded for the adoption of newer technologies. In order to succeed, a network design may use either of the two structured approaches discussed below.

Top Down

As it simplifies the process, the top-down design approach is favored by many designers. It does so by providing more control by dividing tasks to directly aim at the scope of the design, assisting designers by letting them view solutions from the perspective of the enterprise.

Bottom Up

On the other hand, the bottom-up design approach initially chooses network technologies and design models. Unfortunately, this greatly increases the risk of design failures due to the greater possibility the network will not be able to provide the needs of the application or business.

Business Driven

An emphasis on a business-driven approach will greatly improve the prospect of attaining a strategic design that will be a success for an enterprise. This is achieved by making both business and technical objectives the central focus of network design. The following will illustrate how a Business Requirement will guide a respective IT & Network Strategy as laid out by the bullet points below:

Business Requirement IT & Network Strategy

Cost Efficiency Consolidate and virtualize networks.

Flexibility Make design responsive and adaptable.

Industry Compliance Ensure compliance with industry standards.

Continuity of Business Design resilient services and networks.

Access Control Maintain confidentiality throughout network.

Compliance

Enterprises commonly practice strict compliance with industry standards to secure advantages for their businesses. For example, compliance with ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management raises the reputation of a financial services company by reducing the number of security breaches. In addition, its operational costs from downtime are minimized.

Part 2 will cover the topics of Top-Down Logic and Scope of Design.