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Unit 1

chapter 1
Network Design Methodology
Cisco Architectures for the Enterprise
• With the constant evolution of networks, Cisco keeps updating its enterprise architectures
• and frameworks. Business drivers can affect network architecture and technology forces
• that affect business.
• Business forces affecting decisions for the enterprise network include the following:
• ■ Return on investment: Companies expect a return (be it cost savings or increased productivity)
• on its investments in network infrastructure. The solutions need to use technology
• to work within a business solution.
• ■ Regulation: Companies need to meet industry regulations; for example, the Health
• Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for the health insurance industry
• and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for the credit card
• industry.
• ■ Competitiveness: To maintain a competitive edge, companies need to use technology to
• make them more competitive than other businesses.
• The technology forces affecting decisions for the enterprise network are
• ■ Removal of borders: Traditional network boundaries have been removed. Access to
• network resources need to be enabled from branch offices, teleworkers, home offices,
• mobile devices, customers, and partner networks.
• ■ Virtualization: Allows for the maximization of efficiencies through the reduction of
• hardware, power consumption, heating and cooling costs, facilities space, and
management
• effort. Virtualization and its benefits are a key goal for almost all organizations. It
• has gained popularity by industry leaders such as VMware.
• ■ Growth of applications: Customers continue to ask for new products, service
offerings,
• improved customer service, greater security, and customization flexibility—all at
• a lower cost
• IT optimization areas are divided into three
groups:
■ Data center
■ Network
■ Application
• Each group has its own experts, budget, and challenges.
• Cisco has created an interwoven framework to create three architectures
for each group that
• provides for optimization at an individual level and the integration with
other areas:
• ■ Borderless networks architecture
• ■ Collaboration architecture
• ■ Data center and virtualization architecture
Borderless Networks Architecture
• Cisco borderless networks architecture is a next-generation solution that
enables connectivity to anyone and anything, anywhere, and at any time.
The connectivity needs to be secure, reliable, and seamless. This
architecture optimizes both business and network performance.
• Cisco borderless networks architecture blueprint consists of four major
blocks:
■ Policy and Control: Policies are applied to all users and devices across the
architecture.
■ Network Services: These services include resiliency and control. Cisco
Energy Wise and MediaNet provide capabilities to borderless networks.
■ User Services: These services include mobility, performance, and security.
■ Connection Management: This block delivers secure access anytime and
anywhere,regardless of how the network is accessed
Collaboration and Video Architecture
• The Cisco collaboration and video architecture is composed of
three layers:
■ Communication and Collaboration Applications: This layer
contains conferencing, customer care, enterprise social software, IP
communications, messaging, mobile applications, and TelePresence.
■ Collaboration Services: This layer contains services that support
the collaboration applications: presence, location, session
management, contact management, client frameworks, tagging, and
policy and security management.
■ Infrastructure: This layer is responsible for allowing collaboration
anytime, from anywhere,on any device. It includes virtual machines,
the network, and storage
Data Center and Virtualization
Architecture
• The Cisco data center and virtualization architecture
comprises a comprehensive set of virtualization technologies
and services that bring the network, computing, storage, and
virtualization platforms together. This architecture consists of
three components.
• Unified Management: Features automation, orchestration,
and lifecycle management to simplify deployment and
operation of physical/bare metal, virtual, and cloud
infrastructures.
Unified Fabric: This component delivers high-performance data and
storage networking to simplify deployment, help ensure quality of
experience, and reduce operating costs. Cisco integrated network
services provide high-speed connectivity and high-availability, increase
application performance, and reduce security risk in multitenant
environments
■ Unified Computing: This component provides a highly scalable,
system-level computing solution that integrates computing, access
networking, and storage networking. Embedded management
capabilities simplify operations across physical, virtual, and cloud
infrastructures.
Benefits of the Cisco Network Architectures
• Functionality: Supports organizational requirements
• Scalability :Supports growth and expansion of organizational tasks
• Availability :Provides services reliability, anywhere and anytime
• Performance :Provides responsiveness, throughput, and utilization
on a per application basis
• Manageability: Provides control, performance monitoring, and fault
detection
• Efficiency :Provides network services and infrastructure with
reasonable operational costs and appropriate capital investment
Cisco Design Lifecycle: Plan, Build, Manage
• Cisco is introducing an updated network lifecycle with three phases: Plan,
Build, and Manage (PBM), each with processes. Each phase is important in
meeting customers’ needs, organizational goals, and constraints.
■ Plan: This phase includes processes for the assessment and network strategy,
building the network design, and defining a plan.
■ Build: This phase includes processes for the validation of the solution, the
deployment of new IT and network solutions, and the migration to new
infrastructures.
■ Manage: This phase includes processes for product support, solution
support, optimization, and operations management of the network
Plan Phase
• The Plan phase is divided into three processes:
■ Strategy and Analysis process
■ Assessment process
■ Design process
• During the Strategy and Analysis process , network architecture strategies are created
and roadmaps to transform the network architecture are developed
A cost-effective strategy is developed with a measurable return of investment (ROI).
The network assessment helps determine the network infrastructure’s compliance
against industry and Cisco’s best practices
and corporate policies.
The assessment also determines gaps in the network operation team’s ability to support
the new technologies being introduced.
The Design process creates a resilient and scalable network design that can support the
business requirements
Build Phase
• The Build phase is divided into three processes:
■ Validation process
■ Deployment process
■ Migration process
• The Validation process confirms that the proposed solution meets your requirements for
availability, security, reliability, and performance through assessment and lab environments.
• This will mitigate the risks associated with upgrading the network.
• The Deployment process installs and configures new IT and network solutions with minimal
disruption to your production network. It accomplishes the business and technical goals of
the new solution.
• The Migration process upgrades the network infrastructure by a systematic and efficient
approach, which could control costs, improve operational excellence, reduce network
operation costs and system outages, and mitigate risk during device, network, and software
refreshes.
Manage Phase
• The Manage phase is divided into four processes:
■ Product Support process
■ Solution Support process
■ Optimization process
■ Operations Management process
• The Product Support process provides automated network equipment inventory management,
allowing better planning of equipment upgrades. It efficiently manages risk, lowers support costs, and
increases operational efficiencies.
• The Solution Support process provides dedicated and focused resources to manage and troubleshoot
issues that might arise in new complex solutions. It increases solution uptime and employee
productivity.
• The Optimization process identifies gaps, delivers recommendations, and provides expert technical
support to improve on the deployed solution. It increases the performance, availability, resiliency, and
visibility of the network.
• The Operation Management process ensures that the network staff has enough competence in the
network technology to accelerate adoption of advanced technologies.
• It lowers the total cost of network ownership. Proactive monitoring and network management also
occur in this process
Prepare, Plan, Design, Implement, Operate, and
Optimize Phases

• The historical Cisco network lifecycle has six phases: Prepare, Plan, Design,
Implement, Operate, and Optimize. These phases are collectively known as
PPDIOO. The PPDIOO lifecycle provides four main benefits:
■ It lowers the total cost of ownership by validating technology requirements
and planning for infrastructure changes and resource requirements.
■ It increases network availability by producing a sound network design and
validating the network operation.
■ It improves business agility by establishing business requirements and
technology strategies.
■ It speeds access to applications and services by improving availability,
reliability, security, scalability, and performance
• Actions That Lower the Cost of Ownership
• Identifying and validating technology requirements
• Planning for infrastructure changes and resource requirements
• Developing a sound network design aligned with technical requirements and
business goals
• Accelerating successful implementation
• Improving the efficiency of the network and the staff that supports it
• Reducing operating expenses by improving the efficiency of operation
processes and tools
• Actions That Increase Network Availability
• Assessing the state of the network and its ability to support the proposed
design
• Specifying the correct set of hardware and software releases and keeping
them current
• Producing a sound operations design and validating network operation
• Staging and testing the proposed system before deployment
• Improving staff skills
• Proactively monitoring the system and assessing availability trends and
alerts
• Proactively identifying security breaches and defining remediation plans
• Actions That Improve Business Agility
• Establishing business requirements and technology strategies
• Readying sites to support the system that will be implemented
• Integrating technical requirements and business goals into a detailed design and
demonstrating
• that the network is functioning as specified
• Expertly installing, configuring, and integrating system components
• Continually enhancing performance
• Actions That Accelerate Access to Applications and Services
• Accessing and improving operational preparedness to support current
and planned network technologies and services
• Improving service delivery efficiency and effectiveness by increasing
availability, resource capacity, and performance
• Improving the availability, reliability, and stability of the network and the
applications that run on it
• Managing and resolving problems that affect the system and keeping
software applications current
• Prepare Phase
• The Prepare phase establishes organization and business requirements,
develops a network strategy, and proposes a high-level conceptual
architecture to support the strategy.
• Technologies that support the architecture are identified. This phase
creates a business case to establish a financial justification for a network
strategy.
• Plan Phase
• The Plan phase identifies the network requirements based on goals, facilities,
and user needs.
• This phase characterizes sites and assesses the network, performs a gap
analysis against best-practice architectures, and looks at the operational
environment.
• A project plan is developed to manage the tasks, responsible parties,
milestones, and resources to do the design and implementation. The project
plan aligns with the scope, cost, and resource parameters established with
the original business requirements.
• This project plan is followed (and updated) during all phases of the cycle.
• Design Phase
• The network design is developed based on the technical and business
requirements obtained from the previous phases. The network design
specification is a comprehensive detailed design that meets current business
and technical requirements. It provides high availability, reliability, security,
scalability, and performance. The design includes network diagrams and an
equipment list. The project plan is updated with more granular information for
implementation.
• After the Design phase is approved, the Implement phase begins.
• Implement Phase
• New equipment is installed and configured, according to design
specifications, in the Implement phase.
• New devices replace or augment the existing infrastructure.
• The project plan is followed during this phase. Planned network
changes should be communicated in change control meetings, with
necessary approvals to proceed.
• Each step in the implementation should include a description,
detailed implementation guidelines, estimated time to implement,
rollback steps in case of a failure, and any additional reference
information.
• As changes are implemented, they are also tested before moving to
the Operate phase.
• Operate Phase
• The Operate phase maintains the network’s day-to-day
operational health. Operations include managing and monitoring
network components, routing maintenance, managing upgrades,
managing performance, and identifying and correcting network
faults.
• This phase is the design’s final test. During operation, network
management stations should monitor the network’s general
health and generate traps when certain thresholds are reached.
• Fault detection, correction, and performance monitoring events
provide initial data for the Optimize phase.
• Optimize Phase
• The Optimize phase involves proactive network
management by identifying and resolving issues before
they affect the network. The Optimize phase may create
a modified network design if too many network
problems arise, or to improve performance issues or
resolve application issues.
• The requirement for a modified network design leads to
the network lifecycle beginning.
Project Deliverables
• During the lifecycle of the network, several documents are
created. The first documents are high level in scope, and as the
project works through the lifecycle phases, more details are
generated. The following are the most common deliverables
generated in a network project:
• High-level design (HLD) document: The HLD document includes
business and technical requirements as well as proposed
network architectures. No specific detailed design information
such as proposed IP subnets and VLANs are created at this point.
• Low-level design (LLD) document: The LLD document takes the
HLD document as its basis. The LLD document includes detailed
design information such as network topology, specific hardware
models, software versions, IP addressing, VLANs, routing protocols,
redundancy and scalability details, and security considerations.
■ Bill of materials (BOM): Contains the part numbers, description,
and quantities of the network equipment to be acquired for the
network project.
■ Network migration plan (NMP): Explains the plan for migrating the
network from the current state to the new design. The NMP is part
of the LLD document
• Network implementation plan (NIP): Contains the steps required
to install and configure the network equipment and the steps that
verify basic network operation. Information for each step should
include step description, estimated implementation time, and
design document references.
• Network ready for use test plan (NRFU): Contains the actions
required to test the customer network to certify it’s ready for use.
The NRFU plan includes tests for devices, circuit throughput,
routing, failover, QoS, management, security, and applications
Design Methodology
• Design methodology has three steps:
• Step 1. Identifying customer network requirements
• Step 2. Characterizing the existing network
• Step 3. Designing the network topology and solutions
• In Step 1, decision makers identify requirements, and a conceptual architecture is
proposed. This step occurs in the Strategy and Analysis process of the PBM Plan phase.
• In Step 2, the network is assessed, and a gap analysis is performed to determine the
infrastructure necessary to meet the requirements. The network is assessed on function,
performance, and quality. This step occurs in the Assessment process of the PBM Plan
phase.
• In Step 3, the network topology is designed to meet the requirements and close the
network gaps identified in the previous steps. A detailed design document is prepared
during this phase. Design solutions include network infrastructure, Voice over IP (VoIP),
content networking, and intelligent network services. This set occurs in the Design
process of the PBMDesign phase.
Identifying Customer Design Requirements
• To obtain customer requirements, you need to not only talk to network
engineers, but also talk to business unit personnel and company managers.
Networks are designed to support applications; you want to determine the
network services you need to support.
• The steps to identify customer requirements are as follows:
• Step 1. Identify network applications and services.
• Step 2. Define the organizational goals.
• Step 3. Define the possible organizational constraints.
• Step 4. Define the technical goals.
• Step 5. Define the possible technical constraints.
• After you complete these steps, you then analyze the data and
develop a network design.
• A table identifying applications should list the following:
■ Planned application types: Such as email, collaboration, voice,
web browsing, file sharing, and database
■ Concrete applications: Such as Outlook and Meeting Place
■ Business importance: Labeled as critical, important, or
unimportant
■ Comment: Any additional information critical to the design of
the network
• Planned infrastructure services should also be gathered. Network services
include security, quality of service (QoS)network management, high
availability, unified communications , mobility, and virtualization.
• For organizational goals, you should identify whether the company’s goal is
to improve customer support, add new customer services, increase
competitiveness, or reduce costs.
• It might be a combination of these goals, with some of them being more
important than others.
• Some organizational goals are as follows:
■ Increase competitiveness
■ Reduce costs
■ Improve customer support
■ Add new customer services
• Organizational constraints include budget, personnel, policy, and schedule. The
company might limit you to a certain budget or timeframe. The organization might
require the project to be completed in an unreasonable timeframe. It might have
limited personnel to support the assessment and design efforts, or it might have
policy limitations to use certain protocols.
• Technical goals support the organization’s objectives and the supported applications.
• Technical goals include the following:
■ Improve the network’s response-time throughput
■ Decrease network failures and downtime (high availability)
■ Simplify network management
■ Improve network security
■ Improve reliability of mission-critical applications
■ Modernize outdated technologies (technology refresh)
■ Improve the network’s scalability
• Network design might be constrained by parameters that limit the
solution. Legacy applications might still exist that must be supported
going forward, and these applications might require a legacy protocol
that may limit a design. Technical constraints include the following:
• ■ Existing wiring does not support new technology.
• ■ Bandwidth might not support new applications.
• ■ The network must support existing legacy equipment.
• ■ Legacy applications must be supported (application compatibility
Characterizing the Existing Network
• Characterizing the network is Step 2 of the design methodology. In
this section, you learn to identify a network’s major features, tools to
analyze existing network traffic, and tools for auditing and monitoring
network traffic.
• Steps in Gathering Information
• When arriving at a site that has an existing network, you need to obtain all the existing
documentation. Sometimes no documented information exists. You should be prepared to use
tools to obtain information and get access to log in to the network devices to obtain information.
Here are the steps for gathering information:
• Step 1. Identify properties of the existing network: network topology, technologies and
applications. Use existing documentation and organizational input.
• Step 2. Perform a network audit that adds detail to the description of the network.
• Step 3. Analyze the gathered information.
• When gathering existing documentation, you look for site information such as site names,
site addresses, site contacts, site hours of operation, and building and room access. Network
infrastructure information includes locations and types of servers and network devices, size
of each site, data center and closet locations, LAN wiring, WAN technologies and circuit
speeds, and power used. Logical network information includes IP addressing, routing protocols,
network management, and security access lists used. You need to find out whether voice or video is
being used on the network.
• Network Audit Tools
• When performing a network audit, you have three primary sources of information:
■ Existing documentation
■ Existing network management software tools
■ New network auditing tools
• After gathering the existing documentation, you must obtain access to the existing management
software. The client may already have Cisco Works tools, from which you can obtain hardware models
and components and software versions. You can also obtain the existing router and switch configurations.
• The network audit should provide the following information:
• ■ Network device list
• ■ Hardware specifications
• ■ Software versions
• ■ Configuration of network devices
• ■ Auditing tools’ output information
• ■ Interface speeds
• ■ Link, CPU, and memory utilization
• ■ WAN technology types and carrier information
• In a small network, you might be able to obtain the required information via
a manual assessment. For a larger network, a manual assessment might be
too time-consuming.
• Network assessment tools include the following :
• ■ Manual assessment
• ■ Manual commands: Review of device confi guration and operation though
the use of
• show commands of network device confi gurations, interface loads, and
router and
• switch logs
• ■ Scripting tools
• Existing network management and auditing tools
• ■ Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP): Used to monitor performance of
network devices and link utilization
■ NetFlow: Used for collecting and measuring data of every fl ow in a network
segment.
■ Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP): Used to discover how network devices are
interconnected to each other. Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) is used in
multivendor environments.
■ Syslog: Generates time-stamped log information of device and system events that are
captured and exported to a syslog server.
■ Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR): Intelligent classification engine.
■ Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Solarwinds: Collects SNMP and NetFlow information.
■ Wireshark: Utilizes SPAN port technology to capture real-time packets for analysis
• Additional tools with emphasis on VoIP, wireless, and security
• ■ AirMagnet Analyzer Pro
• ■ Ekahau Site Survey for wireless site survey
• ■ LanGuard network security scanner for security
• When performing manual auditing on network devices, you can use the following
commands to obtain information:
■ show environment: Displays temperature, voltage, and fan information
■ show processes cpu: Displays the average CPU utilization information for the last 5
seconds,1 minute, and 5 minutes
■ show version: Displays software version and features, names and sources of configuration
files, the boot image, device uptime, and reason for the last reboot
■ show memory: Displays statistics on system memory, including total bytes as well as used
and free bytes
■ show logging: The state of the syslog error and event logging, including host addresses,and
the logging destinations (console, monitor, buffer, or host) for which logging is enabled
■ show interfaces: Displays interfaces’ statistics, including input and output rate of packets
and dropped packets
■ show policy-map interface: Displays the statistics and the configurations of the input
and output policies that are attached to an interface
• ■ show running-config: Provides the full router or switch
configuration currently in use
• ■ show startup-config: Displays the configuration the router or switch
will use at the next reboot
• Network Checklist
• The following network checklist can be used to determine a network’s health
status:
■ New segments should use switches and not use dated hub/shared technology.
■ No WAN links are saturated (no more than 70 percent sustained network
utilization).
■ The response time is generally less than 100ms (one-tenth of a second); more
commonly, less than 2ms in a LAN.
■ No segments have more than 20 percent broadcasts or multicast traffic.
Broadcasts are sent to all hosts in a network and should be limited. Multicast traffic
is sent to a group of hosts but should also be controlled and limited to only those
hosts registered to receive it.
■ No segments have more than one cyclic redundancy check (CRC) error per
million bytes of data.
■ On the Ethernet segments, less than 0.1 percent of the packets result in collisions.
■ A CPU utilization at or more than 75 percent for a 5-minute interval likely suggests
network problems. Normal CPU utilization should be much lower during normal
periods.
■ The number of output queue drops has not exceeded 100 in an hour on any Cisco
router.
■ The number of input queue drops has not exceeded 50 in an hour on any Cisco
router.
■ The number of buffer misses has not exceeded 25 in an hour on any Cisco router.
■ The number of ignored packets has not exceeded 10 in an hour on any interface on
a Cisco router.
■ QoS should be enabled on network devices to allow for prioritization of time-
sensitive or bandwidth-sensitive applications.
Designing the Network Topology and
Solutions
• This section describes the top-down approach for network design,
reviews pilot and prototype test networks, and describes the
components of the design document. As part of the Design process of
the PBM lifecycle, a top-down approach is used that begins with the
organization’s requirements before looking at technologies. Network
designs are tested using a pilot or prototype network before moving
into the Implement phase.
• Top-Down Approach
• Top-down design just means starting your design from the top layer of the OSI
model and working your way down. Top-down design adapts the network and
physical infrastructure to the network application’s requirements. With a top-
down approach, network devices and technologies are not selected until the
applications’ requirements are analyzed. To complete a top-down design, the
following is accomplished:
■ Analysis of application and organization requirements.
■ Design from the top of the OSI reference model:
■ Define requirements for upper layers (application, presentation, session).
■ Specify infrastructure for lower OSI layers (transport, network, data link,
physical).
■ Gather additional data on the network.
Pilot and Prototype Tests
• As soon as the design is complete and before the full
implementation, it is a best practice to test the new solution.
This testing can be done in one of two ways: prototype or pilot.
• A prototype network is a subset of the full design, tested in an
isolated environment. The prototype does not connect to the
existing network. It is a non-production network. The benefit of
using a prototype is that it allows testing of the network design
before it is deployed prior to affecting a production network.
When implementing a new technology such as IPsec, you might
want to implement a prototype test before deploying it to the
operational network.
• A pilot site is an actual production network location that
serves as a test site before the solution is deployed to all
locations in an enterprise. A pilot allows real-world
problems to be discovered before 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 moving forward with
implementation. A failure leads to correcting the design
and repeating the tests to correct any deficiencies.
Design Document
• The design document describes the business requirements; old
network architecture; network requirements; and design, plan, and
configuration information for the new network.
• The network architects and analysts use it to document the new
network changes, and it serves as documentation for the enterprise.
The design document should include the following sections
■ Introduction: This section describes the project’s purpose and the reasons for
the network design.
■ Design Requirements: This section lists the organization’s requirements,
constraints, and goals.
■ Existing Network Infrastructure: This section includes logical (Layer 3)
topology diagrams; physical topology diagrams; audit results; network health
analysis; routing protocols; a summary of applications; a list of network routers,
switches, and other devices; configurations; and a description of issues.
■ Design: This section contains the specific design information, such as logical
and physical topology, IP addressing, routing protocols, and security
configurations.
■ Proof of Concept: This section results from live pilot or prototype testing
■ Implementation Plan: This section includes the detailed steps for the
network staff to implement the new installation and changes. It also
includes configuration templates for LAN switches and WAN routers.
■ Appendixes: This section contains a list of existing network devices,
configurations, and additional information used in the design of the
network.

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