How to design network | Eight step

design methodology
Posted by Waqas Azam On July 16, 2013 0 Comment

Designing a network?
For designing a network against any requirements you can use the following eight
steps design methodology. Which have a complete detail and procedure for
designing any network.

Recognize Customer needs

Describe the existing Network

Design networking & topology Solution

Plan the network implementation

Construct a prototype network

Fully Document the Design

Implement the Dsign

Verify , monitor and modify as needed

1. Network Design Requirements |Identifying

Customer Design Requirements:
Network designing process starts from information gathering from customer, to
obtain customer requirements, you need to communicate with network engineers,
business unit personnel and company managers. You can identify the customer
requirements by directory talking to customer. As a network designer you need
following steps to identify customer requirements:

Identify network applications and services that the organization

wants to run in it network.

Define the organizational goals.

Define the possible organizational constraints and

limitations, these limitations may be related to cost.

Define the technical goals

Define the possible technical constraints.

After you complete above these steps, you then analyze the data and develop a
network design.You need to identify current and planned applications and
determine the importance ofeach application. For example is email as important
as customer support? VOIP services are required or not?

Identify network applications and services:

Figure out all the applications required for an organization and list them. You need
to find out which network applications need high-availability and high-bandwidth
you need to create and prepare a plan for these applications and services.

Planned application types

: you need to define an application for different required services suchas for email,
exchange server and outlook at client end, for collaboration and voice services
Cisco call manager or Microsoft Lynccan be used and also same for other service
like web browsing, filesharing and database. Also have to find out the Business
importance of different application and labeled them as critical, important, or
unimportant. For example for some organization email may a critical application
as compare to instant messaging.
Also list the additional network services like security,quality of service (QoS),
network management, high availability, unified communications,mobility, and
virtualization.

Define the organizational goals

Organizational goals are related to companys development, you should identify
whether the companys goal is to improvecustomer support, add new customer
services, increase competitiveness, or reducecosts. It might be a combination of
these goals, with some of them being more importantthan others. Some
organizational goals are as follows:

Quality of Service

Increase competitiveness

Reduce costs

Improve customer support

Add new customer services

Define the possible organizational constraints and

limitations
Organizational constraints and limitations include cost, personnel, policy, and time
limitations. The organizationmight have some limitations related to cost and you
may be given a certain budget or timeframe to complete the project. The
organization might require the projectto be completed in an unreasonable
timeframe. It might have limited personnel to supportthe assessment and design
efforts, or it might have policy limitations to apply certainstandard and protocols.
For example for some organization,you may need to implement different policies
and certain level of security because of HIPPA certification and requirements.

Define the technical goals

Technical goals support the organizations objectives and the supported

applications.
Some Technical goals include the following:

Improve network security

Implement QoS

Improve the networks response-time,throughput

Decrease network failures and downtime (high availability)

Simplify network management

Improve reliability of mission-critical applications

Updateout-of-date technologies with latest technologies

Improve the networks scalability

Define the possible technical constraints

Network design might be affected with different technical constraints. Legacy
applicationsmight still exist that must be supported going forward, and these
applicationsmight require a legacy protocol that may limit a design. Technical
constraints include existing cablingthat does not support new technology, low
bandwidth might not support new applications. So you need to find all the
technical constrains and solution against each constrain.

2.Describe the Existing Network

Characterizing the existing network is second step of the network design
methodology. In this step, you need to identify a networks existing infrastructure
and services that are currently running. You can use the different tools to analyze
existing network traffic, and toolsfor auditing and monitoring network traffic.
For describing the existing network you need to visit the site and all the
existingdocumentation related to current network are great source of obtaining
the information related to existing network. Sometimes no documented
information exists. You should be prepared touse different tools to obtain
information and get access to log into the network devices to obtaininformation.
Following are the steps for gathering information:

Identify all existing organization information and

documentation:
Exiting network documentation can provide you different information such as

Site names

Sitelocation

Site contacts

Cabling layout and track within the building

Server room location

Operational hours of office

Networkinfrastructure information like:

o

locations and types of servers and network devices

WAN technologies and circuitspeeds

Power used

Logical network information includes IP addressing,

routing protocols,network management, and security
ACLs.

Perform a network audit that adds detail to the

description of the network.
For information gathering of existing network you can perform network audit, you
can perform this audit the help of existing documentation, existing network
management software toolsand with some otheraudit tools.After gathering the
existing documentation, you must obtain access to the existing
managementsoftware. The client may already have CiscoWorks tools from which
you can obtainhardware models and components and software versions. You can
also obtain theexisting router and switchconfigurations.
The network audit should provide you the network device list, hardware models,
versions of software, configuration of network devices, interface speeds, link, CPU,
bandwidth and memory utilization.
In small network, you might be able to acquire the necessary information via a
physicaljudgment, but for larger network, a manual assessment is a timeconsuming. Manual assessment includes the using of commands to find the
configuration of different devices, normally show commands provide you the
information relation to devices information like model, configuration etc. Some of
examples of show commands (Cisco) are:

show running-config

show tech-support

show version

show interface

Show Ipint brief

show processes cpu

show log

For large network you can use differentNetwork auditing and Analysis tools
including:

Network auditing tools

CiscoWorks: Maps the network and collects network topology, hardware

andsoftware versions, and configurations.
Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR): Cisco developed NetworkBased Application Recognition as part of itsContent Networking platform for
implementing intelligent network services like available resources are utilized as
efficiently as possible.
NetFlow: Provides a view of network traffic flows on a specific network interface.
Cisco Operations Manager is also a handy tool.
Some third-party tools are AirMagnet Survey PRO, Stats Manager,Yellowjacket,
Redcell engineering pro, NetcordiaNEtMRI, Netformix, NetQoS, and Pari Networks.

Network Analysis Tools

For application-level information you may need the details of IP packetsfor this
you can use different analysis tools and software. Network analysistools include
the following:

NetformxDesignXpert Enterprise

CNS NetFlow Collector Engine

Cisco Embedded Resource Manager (ERM)

Third-party tools: Such as Sniffer, AirMagnetWifi Analyzer, BVS

Yellowjacket802.11, NetIQ Vivinet Assessor, NetcordiaNetMRI, and SolarWinds
Orion.

3. Designing the Network Topology and

Solutions
In this step or section of eight step design methodology you have to select the
network topology and need to prepare the network solution for organization. The
best approach to design the network topology is the structure approach which
allows you to develop the optimal solution with lower cost with fulfilling all
requirements of customer like capacity, flexibility, functionality, performance,
scalability and availability.
Network solution includes the things like WAN technologies, LAN services and all
devices through which you can implement this network solution.
You can start the network designing process with information that you extract
through:
1.

Existing information and documentation

2.

Network audit

3.

Traffic analysis

Cisco recommends you to use the top-down approach for designing the network
topology and solution. Aspart of the Design phase you can
use PPDIOO methodology, or a top-down approach is usedthat begins with the
organizations requirements before looking at technologies. Networkdesigns are
tested using a pilot or prototype network before moving into theImplement phase.
Top-down design just means starting your design from the top layer of the OSI
model andworking your way down. Top-down design adapts the network and
physical infrastructureto the network applications needs. With a top-down
approach, network devices and technologiesare not selected until the
applications requirements are analyzed.

4. Plan the network implementation

The 4th step is plan the network implementation which involves the good degree of
documentation, diagram and other related material. In documentation you should
have the step-by-step procedure of each aspect of modular network and have the
complete detail for implementation of each step. Documentation must have
rollback plan for each step, if something goes wrong you can back to previous
step and after modification you can re-implement that step again.
Another important aspect of network implementation plan is to define the time
frame for each steps or each modules, you can include your project managers for
these purposes. Also make sure that you include the test at every step in the
process. And for simplicity you can break down complex procedures into small
chunks which provide the better understanding and easy implementation.

5. Construct a prototype network or a Pilot

site for testing of network Design
During the network designing and implementation when you finish a new module
of network or deploy the design to small site, before the full implementation, it is
a best practiceto test the new solution. This testing can be done in one of two
ways: prototype orpilot.
A prototype network is a subset of the full design, tested in an isolated
environment. Theprototype does not connect to the existing network. The benefit
of using a prototype isthat it allows testing of the network design before it is
deployed before affecting a productionnetwork. When implementing a new
technology such as IPsec, you might want toimplement a prototype test before
deploying it to the operational network.
A pilot site is an actual live location that serves as a test site before the
solution is deployedto all locations in an enterprise. A pilot allows real-world

problems to be discoveredbefore deploying a network design solution to the rest

of the internetwork.
With both a prototype and a pilot, successful testing leads to proving the design
and movingforward with implementation. A failure leads to correcting the design
and repeatingthe tests to correct any deficiencies.

6. Fully Document the Design | Network

Design Document
Documenting the project is the best practice and has a number of advantages and
future benefits.
The design document describes the business requirements, also including the old
network architecture, networkrequirements, design, plan, and configuration
information for the new network.The network architects and analysts use it to
document the new network changes, and itserves as documentation for the
enterprise. For network design-document you can follow the standard process for
creating the document. This procedure includes the introduction of project,
designing requirement, detail about the existing network, design, proof of
concepts, implementation of plan and appendixes. Short description of each
document module is as under:

Introduction describes introductory information related to the projects purpose

and the reasons for the network design.
Design Requirements lists the organizations requirements, constraints, and
goals.
Existing Network Infrastructure includes logical (Layer 3) topology diagrams;
physicaltopology diagrams; audit results; network health analysis; routing
protocols; asummary of applications; a list of network routers, switches, and other
devices; configurations;and a description of issues.
Network Design contains the specific design information, such as logical and
physical topology, network diagrams, IP addressing, routing protocols, and
security configurations.
Proof of Concept results from live pilot or prototype testing.
Implementation Plan includes the detailed steps for the network staff to
implementthe new installation and changes.
Appendixes contains list of exiting network devices, configurations, and
additional information used in the design of the network.

7. Implement the Design

In implementation phase network engineer implement the networks designer

design. In this phase network engineer implement the documented steps, network
diagram into real network.
The first six step of eight step design model is related to CCDA and where you
have to design and document the projectwhereas the remaining two steps are
related to implementation and verification which is the part of CCNP.

8. Verify, monitor and modify as needed

Once your network is fully implemented then your job to run and operate the
network properly, you have to monitor the network devices, traffic and other
security aspects. You can make the modification if you find something wrong with
network operation during monitoring of network. Also if you need to add some
more services and feature you can add these services too.