Product Development | 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.

Progressive Office Cabling

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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.