Overview of network design and
management
• system methodology
• System description
• Service description
• Performance Characteristics
• Network supportability
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system methodology
• Identify customer requirements
• Characterize the existing network
• Design topology
• Plan the implementation
• Build a pilot network
• Document the design
• Implement the design, and monitor its use
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system methodology
• Two Main Principles
For a network design to work well, there is need to
balance between
• Hierarchy – how much network traffic flows connect in tiers
of organization
• Like tiers on an org chart, hierarchy provides separation and structure
for the network
• Interconnectivity – offsets hierarchy by allowing connections
between levels of the design, often to improve performance
between them
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system methodology
• Two Main Principles
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system methodology
Requirements
Determining the requirements for a network probably isn’t as
much fun as shopping for really expensive hardware
• And that may be why many networks are poorly designed –
no one bothered to think through their requirements
• Many people will jump to a specific technology or hardware
solution, without fully considering other options – the
obvious solution may not be the best one
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system methodology
Requirements
• We need to develop the low level design and the higher
level architecture, and understand the environment in
which they operate
• We also need to prove that the design we’ve chosen is
‘just right’
• Is that N1 million network backbone really enough to
meet our needs?
• How do we know N500,000 wouldn’t have been good
enough?
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system methodology
Requirements
• Part of this process is managing the customer’s
expectations
• They may expect a much simpler or more expensive solution
than is really needed
• Showing analysis of different design options, technologies, or
architectures can help prove you have the best solution
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system methodology
Plan Ahead
• The 80/20 rule applies here
• 80% of the cost of a network is its operation
and support
• Only 20% is the cost of designing and implementing it
So plan for easy operation, maintenance, and upgrade of
the network
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System description
• A system is a set of components that work together to
provide connectivity, services and communications to
users.
Components of system includes:
• Users, hosts (PCs, laptops, handhelds).
• Devices : routers & switches.
• Links (wired, wireless).
• Protocols (IP, TCP,FTP,SNMP).
• Applications (E-mail, Remote login (Telnet) ,P2P file
sharing,
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System description
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Service description
The organization has been developing service descriptions for IP networks.
• IP networks : communication protocol.
• Encapsulated packet structures.(sends packet)
• Responsible for addressing hosts(source to destination).
• Version: (IPv4) – decimal ([Link])
• subnet mask: 255 255 255 0(class D)
• IP ranges: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D.
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Service description
We can look at this from two perspectives:
• Levels of performance and Functions in the network.
Levels of performance are described as RMA (, Reliability,
Maintainability, and Availability)
system design attributes.
o Reliability: to perform its required functions under stated
conditions for a specified period of time.(work
simultaneously)
o Maintainability: is used to maintenance the system such as,
repair or replace faulty, prevent unexpected breakdowns.
o Availability : to describe the amount of period that the
system resources is available
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Service description
Functions are described as
o Accounting: to provide information about users and
their network resource usage(user accounts login
details).
o Billing: Creating an invoice related to the use of
infrastructure and services(inbound/ outbound).
o Scheduling: processes or data flows are given access to
system resources (processor time, communications)
o Management: coordinates the efforts of system to
accomplish goals and objectives.
o Security: give protection.
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Service description
o Network services in most of today’s networks are based
on best-effort (unpredictable) delivery.
o Network services are (hierarchical service characteristics,
and individual service characteristics) can be grouped
together to form higher-level descriptions of a service.
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Service description
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Service characteristics
o One of the goals of network analysis is to be able to
characterize(give better) services so that they can be
designed into the network and purchased from vendors
and service providers.
o Service characteristics are individual network
performance and functional parameters that are used to
describe services.
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Service characteristics
Service characteristics contains:
o Service levels
o System Components and Network Services
o Service Requests & Requirements
o Performance Characteristics
Service levels
o System Components and Network Services.
o Service Requests & Requirements.(user requirements,
application requirements, device requirements, and network
requirements.)
o Service offerings(Service offerings map to service requests and
thus can also be categorized as best effort, predictable, or
guaranteed.)
o Service metrics/activities.
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Service characteristics
Service levels
Service characteristics can be grouped together to form
one or more service levels for the network.
There are many ways to describe service levels, including:
o committed information rates (CIRs);
o levels of capacity;
o classes of service (CoSs);
o delay and capacity characteristics;
o types of service (ToSs);
o qualities of service (QoSs);
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Service characteristics
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Service Requests & Requirements
Are in part, distinguished by the degree of predictability needed
from the service by the user, application, or device making the
request.
Based on their predictability, service requests are categorized as best
effort, predictable, or guaranteed.
o Best-effort service: means that there is no control over how the
network will satisfy the service request—that there are no guarantees
associated with this service.
o Guaranteed service: provides an assured level of bandwidth, with a
firm end-to-end delay bound and no queuing loss for conforming
packets of a data flow.
o predictable services: can provide services of predictable
communication to applications makes the development of new ones
like an expensive and risky
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Service Requests & Requirements
For service performance requirements and characteristics to be
useful, they must be configurable, measurable, and verifiable within
the system.
Therefore, performance requirements and characteristics were
described in terms of service metrics(measurements), which are
intended to be:
• Configurable, set a value for threshold/doorstep and limit
• Measurable, by monitoring current state value.
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Performance Characteristics
Services may include one or more of the performance
characteristics:
o Capacity: is used as a label for the class of characteristics that
involves moving information from place to place, including
bandwidth, throughput, and so forth.
o Delay: is a label for the class of characteristics that includes end-
to-end delay, round-trip delay, and delay variation.
o RMA: is a label for the class of characteristics that includes
reliability, maintainability, and availability
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Performance Characteristics
o Performance requirements can be combined to describe a
performance range for the system.
o Performance envelope is a combination of two or more
performance requirements, with thresholds and upper and/or
lower limits for each.
o Availability: Deals with the duration of up-time for operations and
is a measure of how often the system is alive and well.
o Throughput:
• the amount of work that a computer can do in a given time period
• the amount of processed data in communication networks.
• throughput is the rate at which a system achieves its goal.
o Utilization: Network utilization is the ratio of current network
traffic to the maximum traffic that the port can handle.
o Delay: the period or amount of time during which something
is delayed
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Performance Characteristics
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Network Supportability
o Good network architects/designers take into account the
major factors that affect operability and supportability as
they make their decisions.
o The post-implementation phases of a network’s life cycle
can be broken into three elements:
• operations
• maintenance
• human knowledge.
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Network Supportability
o Key characteristics of a network architecture and design
that affect the post-implementation costs include:
• Network and system reliability
• Network and system maintainability
• Training of the operators to stay within operational
• constraints
• Quality of the staff required to perform maintenance
actions
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