Tag Archives: Network Design

Corporations that have subsidiaries located in many countries worldwide, as well as a smaller company with a handful of departments and employees, need a well-designed network that connects all their computers, printers, servers, and more.

An improperly installed network can result in chaos for an entire organization as it expands. In contrast, a well-designed structured cabling system allows a network to function smoothly even when it is growing rapidly.

During this period of increasingly sophisticated technology, structured cabling is the right answer for building an efficient and cost-effective network. There are numerous companies around the world that specialize in installing structured cabling, but finding the right team for your company will require due diligence.

Many companies undergoing growth focus on revamping existing structured cabling to ensure an uninterrupted flow of an increasing volume of communications and data. They hire a team of specialists who provide guidance on the cabling that will be ideal for their new infrastructure.

Designing and planning a new network revolves around implementing structured cabling solutions that will help a company meet its business needs. There are a handful of basic guidelines for the installation as summarized below:

• Ethernet cable for office buildings, data centers, call centers, small offices, and warehouses


• Fiber cable, multi-mode and single mode, for long distance calls and interactions that are free of interference


• Telco-level network wiring, patch panels, and jacks

In the case of a small office, a brand new space yet to be wired, an existing site undergoing remodeling, or a skyscraper filled with office suites, installing well-designed structured cabling that ensures an efficient and expandable network, is the key to success for the great majority of businesses. Properly installed structured cabling helps ensure the rapid and continuous flow of data, the most valuable asset of a modern company.

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.

Reliable & Manageable Scaling

Scalability is a crucial characteristic that must be considered by network designers.

In addition, a network should also be reliable and manageable, which promote stability.  A network may be capable of expanding to several thousand routers. However, if there is a failure of some sort that causes instability due to greater processing and CPU usage required to compensate, the design won’t be successful.

A scalable network that is a challenge to manage or troubleshoot is also unacceptable.

Network problems that arise would take an excessive amount of time to address and repair, negatively impacting an organization’s business goals of the organization.

Thus, a scalable design must provide a manageable and reliable network.

Combining scalability, reliability, and manageability as the qualities of a network is a challenge. As a network expands, it becomes more complex, making management, maintenance, and repair more difficult.

Fault Isolation & Simplicity

Providing fault isolation boundaries creates fail-stop behavior for the wanted fault model. Fail-stop prevents faulty behavior from propagating past a fault isolation boundary. Effective network design must prevent a failure in one domain from spreading to other domains within a network. This is essential for the avoidance of unneeded processing and delays throughout the whole network because of a device or link failure. In addition, this will result in a converging network that has more stability, reliability, and speed.

The above concept also promotes simplicity as a network architecture characteristic, which decreases complexity in operations. Typically, fault isolation stops the propagation of network fault information across several domains or network areas. This will lead to greater network stability and the minimization of recovery time after failures.

The negative consequences due to a failure of a link or network node may spread to all devices across a network, resulting in a large volume of unneeded processing. A properly designed network using the Fault Domains Principle with its logical separation will limit the negative impact to within one fault domain.

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.

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?

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.

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.

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.

As discussed in Part 2, Top-Down Logic is used for the process of Preparation, Planning, Design, Implementation, Operation, and Optimization (PPDIOO). In addition, network designers must determine the Scope of Design prior to the collection of data and planning. Part 3 will cover Business Requirements, Continuity, and Elasticity.

Requirements

Figuring out what an organization needs requires having an understanding of its current objectives, mission statement, and future plans. Knowledge of these should guide the business-driven aspects of the network design. Using a top-down approach, a business’s goals, drivers, requirements, continuity, and strategy will determine its business applications, technical and functional requirements, and network infrastructure solutions.

Continuity

Business continuity is a company’s ability to continue doing business after a system outage caused by a man-made or natural disaster that has damaged a data center. An organization needs a disaster recovery plan to develop its resiliency in the face of such disasters. Various parts of its network may need to be more resilient due to regulatory compliance.

Elasticity

Elasticity is an organization’s level of flexibility when responding to business developments. This typically refers to a change in business objectives or conditions, including growth, recession, merger, acquisition, etc. Therefore, a company’s network design must have adequate flexibility in order to fulfill its business requirements and strategic goals. A designer’s comprehension of the overall trends of the organization’s business sector will provide valuable guidance in the design’s features that provide flexibility.

The design of a network must give an organization the flexibility that will allow it to perform integrations with other networks. This will usually be required when mergers and acquisitions take place. It is important to note that during a merger or acquisition, the network may undergo considerable growth during a very brief period. In such circumstances, the most daunting challenge for network designers is having to handle the various design principles, conflicting control plane protocols, and overlaps in IP address spaces of the networks being integrated.

Part 4 will cover “How IT Enables Business Innovation.”

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.