Bahir Dar University

Bahir Dar Institute of Technology

Faculty of Computing

Network Design Document

for

Industrial project on [Your Project title here]

Submitted to the faculty of computing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Science in [your program of study here]

Group members
Name ID Number
1. ________________________ _________________
2. ________________________ _________________
3. _______________________ ___ ___________
4. ________________________ _________________
5. ________________________ _________________

Advisor ፡____________________________________

[Year]

Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar Institute of Technology

Declaration

The Project is our own and has not been presented for a degree in any other university and
all the sources of material used for the project have been duly acknowledged.

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Name Signature

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Name Signature

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Name Signature
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Name Signature

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Name Signature

Faculty: Computing

Program: ______________________

Project Title: _________________________________________________________

This is to certify that I have read this project and that in my supervision and the students’
performance, it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a project for the degree of Bachelor
of Science.

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Name of Advisor Signature

Examining committee members signature Date

1. Examiner1 ___________________
2. Examiner2 __________________
3. Examiner2 __________________

It is approved that this project has been written in compliance with the formatting rules laid
down by the faculty.
Roles and Responsibilities of the Group Members

Fill the following role assignment matrix and put a tick mark(√) under each member in line
with each task to indicate who has participated in carrying out the activities to produce the
draft deliverable for discussion to the group so that they will discuss on the issue and come to
consensus. Finally each group member will well understand the entire work of the project by
sharing experiences among the colleagues.

List of Tasks List members

Student1 Student 2 Student 3 Student 4

Task1

Task2

Task3

Task4

.
Acknowledgment
List of acronyms

Write Expand form of abbreviations and short hand notations. You should put them in
alphabetical order and all abbreviations that are included in the document must be written.
List of Figures

Generate a list of figures used in the document with their figure sequence by indicating their
page number

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List of Tables

Generate a list of tables used in the document with their table sequence by indicating their page
number

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Table of Contents
Declaration..................................................................................................................................................2
Roles and Responsibilities of the Group Members......................................................................................3
Acknowledgment.........................................................................................................................................4
List of acronyms..........................................................................................................................................5
List of Figures.............................................................................................................................................6
List of Tables...............................................................................................................................................7
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................................10
1.1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................10
1.2 Project Goal...................................................................................................................................10
1.3 Project Scope.................................................................................................................................10
Chapter 2: Design Requirements...............................................................................................................11
2.1 Design Requirements.....................................................................................................................11
2.2 Business Goals...............................................................................................................................11
2.3 Technical Goals.............................................................................................................................11
2.4 User Communities and Data Stores...............................................................................................12
2.4.1 Network Applications.......................................................................................................................12
2.4.2 Network Applications Traffic Characteristics...............................................................................12
Chapter 3: Existing network infrastructure................................................................................................12
3.1 Current State of the Network.........................................................................................................12
3.1.1 Network Topology.................................................................................................................12
3.1.2 Network Audit.......................................................................................................................12
3.1.3 Applications used in the network...........................................................................................13
3.1.4 Network health analysis.........................................................................................................13
3.2 Recommended changes to the existing network........................................................................13
Chapter 4: Design......................................................................................................................................13
4.1 Design summary............................................................................................................................13
4.2 Design details................................................................................................................................13
4.2.1 Topology design...........................................................................................................................14
4.2.2 Addressing design.........................................................................................................................14

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 4.2.3 Switching and Routing protocol design........................................................................................14
4.2.4 Security design.............................................................................................................................14
4.2.5 Network management design........................................................................................................14
Chapter 5: Implementatin..........................................................................................................................14
5.1 Physical Design.............................................................................................................................14
5.2 Implementation details...................................................................................................................14
5.3 Configuration templates for campus devices.................................................................................14
5.4 Configuration template for WAN devices.....................................................................................15
5.5 Project Schedule............................................................................................................................15
5.6 Test results.....................................................................................................................................15
Appendix...................................................................................................................................................16

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Executive Summary
A comprehensive design document can be many pages in length. For this reason, it is essential
that you include at the beginning of the document an Executive Summary that succinctly states
the major points of the document. The Executive Summary should be no more than one page and
should be targeted at the managers and key project participants who will decide whether to
accept your design. Although the Executive Summary can include some technical information, it
should not provide technical details. The goal of the summary is to sell the decision makers on
the business benefits of your design. Technical information should be summarized and organized
in order of the customer’s highest-priority objectives for the design project.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction
Every design document should include an introduction to present the main reasons leading to the
network design or redesign. It should also describe some background information about the
organization and the type of business the organization is involved.

1.2 Project Goal

This section should state the primary goal for the network design project. The goal should be
business-oriented and related to an overall objective that the organization has to become more
successful in its core business. The Project Goal section should be no more than one paragraph;
it often can be written as a single sentence. Writing it carefully will give you a chance to make it
obvious to the decision makers reading the document that you understand the primary purpose
and importance of the network design project.

1.3 Project Scope

The Project Scope section provides information on the extent of the project, including a
summary of the departments and networks that will be affected by the project. The Project Scope
section specifies whether the project is for a new network or modifications to an existing
network. It indicates whether the design is for a single network segment, a set of LANs, a
building or campus network, a set of WAN or remote-access networks, or possibly the whole
enterprise network.

Chapter 2: Design Requirements

2.1 Design Requirements

Whereas the Project Goal section is generally short, the Design Requirements section is your
opportunity to list all the major business and technical requirements for the network design. The
Design Requirements section should list the goals in priority order. Critical goals should be
marked as such.

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2.2 Business Goals
Business goals explain the role the network design will play in helping an organization provide
better products and services to its customers. Executives who read the design document will be
more likely to accept the network design if they recognize from the Business Goals section that
the network designer understands the organization’s business mission.

Many network designers have a hard time writing the Business Goals section because they are
more interested in technical goals. However, it is critical that you focus your network design
document on the ability of your design to help a customer solve real-world business problems.

2.3 Technical Goals

The Technical Goals section documents the following technical goals, and “Analyzing Technical
Goals and Tradeoffs”:
■ Scalability: How much growth a network design must support.
■ Availability: The amount of time a network is available to users, often expressed as a percent
uptime, or as a mean time between failure (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR).
Availability documentation can also include any information gathered on the monetary cost
associated with network downtime.
■ Network performance: The customer’s criteria for accepting the service level of a network,
including its throughput, accuracy, efficiency, delay, delay variation (jitter), and response time.
Specific throughput requirements for internetworking devices, in packets per second (pps), can
also be stated. Specific throughput requirements for applications should be included in the
Network Applications section.
■ Security: General and specific goals for protecting the organization’s capability to conduct
business without interference from intruders inappropriately accessing or damaging equipment,
data, or operations. This section should also list the various security risks that the customer
identified during the requirements-analysis phase of the design project.
■ Manageability: General and specific goals for performance, fault, configuration, security, and
accounting management.
■ Usability: The ease with which network users can access the network and its services. This
section can include information on goals for simplifying user tasks related to network addressing,
naming, and resource discovery.
■ Adaptability: The ease with which a network design and implementation can adapt to network
faults, changing traffic patterns, additional business or technical requirements, new business
practices, and other changes.
■ Affordability: General information on the importance of containing the costs associated with
purchasing and operating network equipment and services. Specific budget information should
be included in the Project Budget section.

The Technical Goals section should also describe any tradeoffs the customer is willing to make.
For example, some customers might indicate that affordability can be sacrificed to meet strict
availability goals, or usability can be sacrificed to meet strict security goals.

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2.4 User Communities and Data Stores
This section lists major user communities, including their sizes, locations, and the principal
applications they use.

2.4.1 Network Applications

The Network Applications section lists and characterizes the new and existing network
applications.
2.4.2 Network Applications Traffic Characteristics
You should define the different network application traffic characteristics. In this section a
detailed bandwidth requirement of each application and different characteristics of the network
traffic should be included.

Chapter 3: Existing network infrastructure

3.1 Current State of the Network

This section briefly describes the structure and performance of the existing network. It should
include a high-level network map that identifies the location of major internetworking devices,
data processing and storage systems, and network segments. The high level map should
document the names and addresses of major devices and segments and indicate the types and
lengths of principal network segments. For large internetworks, two or three high-level maps
might be necessary. Detailed maps, however, should be placed in the Appendix rather than in
this section.

3.1.1 Network Topology

The network maps should include logical and physical components (for example, the location
and reach of any virtual private networks [VPN], virtual LANs [VLAN], firewall segments,
server clusters, and so on). The maps should also characterize the logical topology of the
internetwork and the networks that make up the internetwork. Network drawings, or text
associated with drawings, should indicate whether networks are hierarchical or flat, structured or
unstructured, layered or not, and so on. They should also indicate network geometry (for
example, star, ring, bus, hub and spoke, or mesh).

3.1.2 Network Audit

You should document the network audit for the existing network. A network audit or assessment
is the second step in acquiring information about an existing network. The auditing process starts
by consolidating existing information the customer provides. Up-to-date information can be
gathered from the existing management software used by the customer. If the customer has
insufficient tools, the designer can choose to temporarily introduce additional software tools; if
they prove useful, these tools can be used in the network permanently (during the Operate and
Optimize phases).
An audit provides details such as the following:
 A list of network devices
 Hardware specifications and versions, and software versions of network devices

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 Configurations of network devices
 Output of various auditing tools to verify and augment the existing documentation
 Link, CPU, and memory utilization of network devices
 A list of unused ports, modules, and slots in network devices, to be used to understand
whether the network is expandable

3.1.3 Applications used in the network

Traffic analysis verifies the set of applications and protocols used in the network and determine
the applications’ traffic patterns. It might reveal any additional applications or protocols running
on the network. Each discovered application and protocol should be described in the following
terms:
 Importance to the customer
 QoS-related requirements
 Security-related requirements
 Scope (in other words, the network modules in which the application or protocol is used)

3.1.4 Network health analysis

This portion of the Current State of the Network section of the network design document should
be dedicated to an analysis of the health and performance of the present network. Detailed health
and performance reports can be placed in the Appendix of the design document to avoid
overwhelming the reader with too much information at this stage.

3.2 Recommended changes to the existing network

This portion should in detail include the recommendation of the customer and suggestion by the
network designer that indicates the changes that should happen in the existing network. It should
explicitly define the type of services and technologies that need change and new services and
procedures that should be added on the existing network.

Chapter 4: Design
4.1 Design summary
In this section you should include the summerized description about the topology of the network,
addressing and naming design, switchning and routing protocol selection and the reason behind
the selection of those protocols and the security and management strategies for the netwok.
4.2 Design details
4.2.1 Topology design
The network topology, including one or more drawings that illustrate the logical architecture of
the new network.
4.2.2 Addressing design
A model for addressing network segments and devices and a model for naming network devices.
4.2.3 Switching and Routing protocol design
A list of the switching and routing protocols that have been selected to implement the design and
any specific implementation recommendations associated with those protocols.
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4.2.4 Security design
Recommended security mechanisms and products, including a summary of security policies and
procedures. (If a detailed security plan was developed as part of the network design, it can be
submitted as an addendum to the design document.)
4.2.5 Network management design
Recommended network management architectures, processes, and products for the new network.

Chapter 5: Implementatin
The Implementation Plan includes your recommendations for deploying the network design. The
level of detail in this section varies from project to project, and depends on your relationship to
your customer.

5.1 Physical Design

The Physical Design section describes the features and recommended uses for the technologies
and devices you selected to implement the design. It can include information for campus
networks and remote-access and WANs. This section can also include information about any
service providers selected.

5.2 Implementation details

 A plan for communicating the design to end users, network administrators, and
management.
 It should also explain how implementation progress will be communicated (possibly via
regularly scheduled status meetings or email messages).
 A training plan for network administrators and end users.
 A plan for measuring the effectiveness of the design after it has been implemented.
 A list of known risks that could delay the project.
 A fallback plans if the network implementation fails.
 A plan for evolving the network design as new application requirements and goals arise.

5.3 Configuration templates for campus devices

Since documenting the full configuration of switching and routing protocols for the network will
be bulky a template that is followed on all switch and router configuration should be included in
this section. The detailed configuration should be included as appendix.

5.4 Configuration template for WAN devices

As it is required for the network to have connectivity to Internet or remote sites the configuration
templated to be followed on WAN devices should be documented in this section. The detailed
configuration should be included in the appendix.

5.5 Project Schedule

The Implementation Plan should include a project schedule or timeline. The level of detail you
include in a schedule depends on your role on the project. In general, the schedule should at least
include the dates and deliverables for major milestones.

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5.6 Test results
This section describes the results of the testing that you did to verify your network design. It is
one of the most important portions of the design document because it gives you a chance to
prove to your customer that your design will likely meet requirements for performance, security,
usability, manageability, and so on. You can describe any prototype or pilot systems that you
implemented and the following testing components:
 Test objectives
 Test acceptance criteria
 Testing tools
 Test scripts
 Results and observations

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Appendix
Example: questionnaires used to gather requirement …

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