Analyzing Business Goals and

Constraints
Session 1
Objectives
• Using Top-Down Network Design Methodology
• Analyzing Business Goal
• Analyzing Business Constraint
Introductions
• Networking professionals have the ability to create
networks that are so complex that when problems arise
they can’t be solved using the same sort of thinking that
was used to create the networks.
• A network created with this complexity often doesn’t
per- form as well as expected, doesn’t scale as the
need for growth arises (as it almost always does), and
doesn’t match a customer’s requirements.
• A solution to this problem is to use a streamlined,
systematic methodology in which the network or
upgrade is designed in a top-down fashion.
Introductions
• Many network design tools and methodologies in use
today resemble the “connect-the- dots” game that some
of us played as children.
• These tools let you place internetworking devices on a
palette and connect them with LAN or WAN media.
• The problem with this methodology is that it skips the
steps of analyzing a customer’s requirements and
selecting devices and media based on those
requirements.
• Good network design must recognize that a customer’s
requirements embody many busi- ness and technical
goals, including requirements for availability, scalability,
affordability, security, and manageability.
Introductions
• Many customers also want to specify a required level of
net- work performance, often called a service level.
• To meet these needs, difficult network design choices
and tradeoffs must be made when designing the logical
network before any physical devices or media are
selected.
• When a customer expects a quick response to a
network design request, a bottom-up (connect-the-dots)
network design methodology can be used, if the
customer’s applications and goals are well known.
Introductions
• However, network designers often think they
understand a customer’s applications and requirements
only to discover, after a network is installed, that they
did not capture the customer’s most important needs.
• Unexpected scalability and performance problems
appear as the number of network users increases.
• These problems can be avoided if the network designer
uses top-down methods that perform requirements
analysis before technology selection.
Introductions
• Top-down network design is a methodology for
designing networks that begins at the upper layers of
the OSI reference model before moving to the lower
layers.
• The top-down methodology focuses on applications,
sessions, and data transport before the selection of
routers, switches, and media that operate at the lower
layers.
• The top-down network design process includes
exploring organizational and group structures to find the
people for whom the network will provide services and
from whom the designer should get valuable information
to make the design succeed.
Introductions
• Top-down network design is also iterative. To avoid
getting bogged down in details too quickly, it is
important to first get an overall view of a customer’s
requirements.
• Later, more detail can be gathered on protocol behavior,
scalability requirements, technology preferences, and
so on. Top-down network design recognizes that the
logical model and the physical design can change as
more information is gathered.
Introductions
• Because top-down methodology is iterative, some
topics are covered more than once in this book. For
example, this chapter discusses network applications.
Chapter 4, “Characterizing Network Traffic,” covers
network applications in detail, with emphasis on network
traffic caused by application- and protocol-usage
patterns. A top-down approach enables a network
designer to get “the big picture” first before spiraling
downward into detailed technical requirements and
specifications.
 Using a Structured Network Design
Process

• Top-down network design is a discipline that grew out of the success of

structured soft- ware programming and structured systems analysis.
• The main goal of structured systems analysis is to more accurately
represent users’ needs, which unfortunately often are ignored or
misrepresented.
• Another goal is to make the project manageable by dividing it into
modules that can be more easily maintained and changed.
• Structured systems analysis has the following characteristics:
– The system is designed in a top-down sequence.
– During the design project, several techniques and models can be
used to characterize the existing system, determine new user
requirements, and propose a structure for the future system.
– A focus is placed on data flow, data types, and processes that
access or change the data.
– A focus is placed on understanding the location and needs of user
communities that access or change data and processes.
– A logical model is developed before the physical model. The logical
model represents the basic building blocks, divided by function, and
the structure of the system. The physical model represents devices
and specific technologies and implementations.
– Specifications are derived from the requirements gathered at the
beginning of the top-down sequence.
Using a Structured Network Design Process

• With large network design projects, modularity is essential.

The design should be split functionally to make the project
more manageable.
• For example, the functions carried out in campus LANs can
be analyzed separately from the functions carried out in
remote-access networks, virtual private networks (VPN),
and WANs.
• Cisco recommends a modular approach with its three-layer
hierarchical model. This model divides networks into core,
distribution, and access layers.
Systems Development Life Cycles
• Typical systems are developed and continue to exist
over a period of time, often called a systems
development life cycle.
• Many systems analysis books use the acronym SDLC
to refer to the system’s life cycle
• Which might sound strange to older networking
students who know SDLC as Synchronous Data Link
Control, a bit-oriented, full-duplex protocol used on
synchronous serial links, often found in a legacy
Systems Network Architecture (SNA) environment.
Systems Development Life Cycles
• network design is divided into four major phases that
are carried out in a cyclical fashion:
– Analyze requirements
– Develop the logical design
– Develop the physical design
– Test, optimize, and document the design
network design and implementation
cycle
Plan Design Implement Operate
Optimize (PDIOO) Network Life Cycle
• Cisco documentation refers to the Plan Design Implement
Operate Optimize (PDIOO) set of phases for the life cycle of a
network.
• It doesn’t matter which life cycle you use, as long as you realize
that network design should be accomplished in a structured,
planned, modular fashion, and that feedback from the users of
the operational network should be fed back into new network
projects to enhance or redesign the network.
• The PDIOO life cycle includes the following steps:
– Plan
– Design
– Implement
– Operate
– Optimize
– Retire
Plan Design Implement Operate Optimize
(PDIOO) Network Life Cycle
Analyzing Business Goals
• Understanding your customer’s business goals and
constraints is a critical aspect of network design.
• Armed with a thorough analysis of your customer’s
business objectives, you can propose a network design
that will meet with your customer’s approval.
• It is tempting to overlook the step of analyzing business
goals, because analyzing such technical goals as
capacity, performance, security, and so on is more
interesting to many network engineers.
Working with Your Client
• Research your client’s business.
• Find out what industry the client is in.
• Learn something about the client’s market, suppliers, products,
services, and competitive advantages.
• With the knowledge of your customer’s business and its external
relations, you can position technologies and products to help
strengthen the customer’s status in the customer’s own industry.
• In your first meeting with your customers, ask them to explain the
organizational structure of the company.
• Your final internetwork design will probably reflect the corporate
structure, so it is a good idea to gain an understanding of how the
company is structured in departments, lines of business, vendors,
partners, and field or remote offices.
• Understanding the corporate structure can help you locate major user
communities and characterize traffic flow.
• Understanding the corporate structure can also help you understand
the corporate culture, which can affect the network design.
• For example, a company with a centralized management structure
might require that products and vendors be chosen by headquarters
management. A decentralized company might let branch offices have
more say.
Working with Your Client
• Ask your customer to state an overall goal of the network
design project.
• Explain that you want a short, business-oriented statement
that highlights the business purpose of the new network.
• Why is the customer embarking on this new network
design project? For what will the new network be used?
• How will the new network help the customer be more
successful in the customer’s business?
• Ask your customer to help you understand the customer’s
criteria for success.
• What goals must be met for the customer to be satisfied?
• Sometimes success is based on operational savings
• Because the new network allows employees to be more
productive. Sometimes success is based on the ability to
increase revenue or build partnerships with other
companies.
Working with Your Client
• In addition to determining the criteria for success, you
should ascertain the consequences of failure:
– What will happen if the network design project fails
or if the network, when installed, does not perform to
specification?
– How visible is the project to upper-level
management?
– Will the success (or possible failure) of the project
be visible to executives?
– To what extent could unforeseen behavior of the
new network disrupt business operations?
Working with Your Client
• You should try to get an overall view of whether the new
network is critical to the business’s mission.
• Investigate the ramifications of the network failing or
experiencing problems.
Changes in Enterprise Networks
• The value of making vast amounts of data available to
employees, customers, and business partners has been
recognized.
• Corporate employees, field employees, contract
employees, and telecommuters need access to sales,
marketing, engineering, and financial data, regardless
of whether the data is stored on centralized or
distributed servers or mainframes.
• Suppliers, vendors, and customers also need access to
many types of data.
Networks Must Make Business Sense
• Although in the past many companies made “technology for
technology’s sake” choices, this is no longer the case. Business
leaders are more involved in Information Technology (IT) decisions
than they once were, and IT managers rely on business managers to
help them prioritize and fund IT projects.
• Network upgrades are made not because some new technology
sounds interesting to the engineers, but because it will help an
enterprise increase profits, productivity, market share, and cash flow.
• Network designers must choose solutions that address the business
dilemmas faced by business managers.
• Many companies have gone through difficult reengineering projects to
reduce operational costs and are still looking for ways to manage
networks with fewer resources and to reduce the recurring costs of
WAN circuits.
• Companies are researching ways to make their data centers more
efficient in their usage of power, cabling, racks, storage, and WAN
circuits.
• Data center managers have discovered that many of their servers’
CPUs are underutilized. A major trend in enterprise network design is
server virtualization, where one hardware platform supports multiple
virtual servers.
Networks Offer a Service
• To meet the needs of their customers, IT departments are
spending more time analyzing and documenting their processes
for delivering services. A focus on processes helps to ensure
effective service delivery and to avoid wasted expenditures on
technology that doesn’t provide a needed service.
• As a network designer, you might find yourself working with IT
architects who adhere to the IT Service Management (ITSM)
discipline.
• ITSM defines frameworks and processes that can help an
organization match the delivery of IT services with the business
needs of the organization.
• ITSM focuses on processes rather than technology and helps an
IT organization think of its users as valued customers rather than
problem-generating adversaries.
• Other trends in IT management that affect network design are
related to governance and compliance. Governance refers to a
focus on consistent, cohesive decisions, policies, and processes
that protect an organization from mismanagement and illegal
activities of users of IT services. Compliance refers to adherence
to regulations that protect against fraud and inadvertent
disclosure of private customer data.
The Need to Support Mobile Users
• Notebook computers have finally become small enough to carry
around, and workers now expect to get work done at home, on
the train, in hotels, in meeting rooms, at customer sites, and even
while having their morning latte at the local coffee shop.
Notebook computers ship with wireless networking built in to
facilitate users getting work done outside the office.
• It shouldn’t matter (to the user anyway) where data is and in what
format. Network users expect network performance to be uniform,
regardless of where the user or data resides. A user should be
able to read email on a cell phone, for example, and read voice
mail from a web browser while sipping coffee in an Internet cafe.
Users should have secure and reliable access to tools and data
wherever they are.
• The challenge for network designers is to build networks that
allow data to travel in and out of the enterprise network from
various wired and wireless portals without picking up any viruses
and without being read by parties for whom it was not intended.
The Importance of Network Security and
Resiliency
• Network security has filtered to the top of the list of
business goals at many companies.
• Although security was always important, it has become
even more important as networks become
indispensable and as tools for breaking into networks
become ubiquitous.
• Enterprises must protect their networks from both the
unsophisticated “script kiddies” and from more
advanced attacks launched by criminals or political
enemies. There is also a continued requirement to
protect networks from Trojan horses and viruses.
The Importance of Network Security and
Resiliency
• Network security has filtered to the top of the list of
business goals at many companies.
• Although security was always important, it has become
even more important as networks become indispensable
and as tools for breaking into networks become ubiquitous.
• Enterprises must protect their networks from both the
unsophisticated “script kiddies” and from more advanced
attacks launched by criminals or political enemies. There is
also a continued requirement to protect networks from
Trojan horses and viruses.
• The network must be available 99.999 percent of the time.
• Disaster recovery plan.
• Consider how much of the network could be damaged
without completely disrupting the company’s mission.
 Typical Network Design Business Goals

• Increase revenue and profit

• Increase market share
• Expand into new markets
• Increase competitive advantages over companies in the same market
• Reduce costs
• Increase employee productivity
• Shorten product-development cycles
• Use just-in-time manufacturing
• Plan around component shortages
• Offer new customer services
• Offer better customer support
• Open the network to key constituents (prospects, investors, customers, business
partners, suppliers, and employees)
• Avoid business disruption caused by network security problems
• Avoid business disruption caused by natural and unnatural disasters
• Modernize outdated technologies
• Reduce telecommunications and network costs, including overhead associated
with separate networks for voice, data, and video
• Make data centers more efficient in their usage of power, cabling, racks, storage,
and WAN circuits
• Comply with IT architecture design and governance goals
Identifying the Scope of a Network
Design Project
• One of the first steps in starting a network design project is
to determine its scope. Some of the most common network
design projects these days are small in scope
• For example, projects to allow a few people in a sales
office to access the enterprise network via a VPN.
• Ask your customer to help you understand if the design is
for a single network segment, a set of LANs, a set of
WANs or remote-access networks, or the entire enterprise
network. Also ask your customer if the design is for a new
network or a modification to an existing one.
• Explain to your customer any concerns you have about the
scope of the project, including technical and business
concerns.
Identifying the Scope of a Network
Design Project

• When analyzing the scope of a network design, you can

refer to the seven layers of the OSI reference model to
specify the types of functionality the new network
design must address. (see textbook for example)
Identifying a Customer’s Network
Applications
• At this point in the design process, you have identified
your customer’s business goals and the scope of the
project
• See Textbook for more details
Analyzing Business Constraints
• Politics and Policies
• Budgetary and Staffing Constraints
• Project Scheduling
Business Goals Checklist
• I have researched the customer’s industry and competition.
• I understand the customer’s corporate structure.
• I have compiled a list of the customer’s business goals, starting with one overall
business goal that explains the primary purpose of the network design project.
• The customer has identified any mission-critical operations.
• I understand the customer’s criteria for success and the ramifications of failure.
• I understand the scope of the network design project.
• I have identified the customer’s network applications (using the Network
Applications chart).
• The customer has explained policies regarding approved vendors, protocols, or
platforms.
• The customer has explained any policies regarding open versus proprietary
solutions.
• The customer has explained any policies regarding distributed authority for
network design and implementation.
• I know the budget for this project.
Summary
• Using systematic methods will help you keep pace with
changing technologies and customer requirements.
• The importance of analyzing your customer’s business
style, tolerance to risk, biases, and technical expertise.
You should also work with your customer to understand
the budget and schedule for the network design project to
make sure the deadlines and milestones are practical.
• Finally, you need to start gaining an understanding of your
client’s corporate structure. Understanding the corporate
structure will help you analyze data flow and develop a
net- work topology, which usually parallels the corporate
structure. It will also help you iden- tify the managers who
will have the authority to accept or reject your network
design, which will help you prepare and present your
network design appropriately.
References
• Oppenheimer, P., & Design, T. D. N. (2011). Cisco
Press. ISBN, 1, 57870-069.