IT Outsourcing Solutions > > Network Planning/Design

Network planning and design: This is an extremely important process which must be performed before the establishment of a new LAN/WAN network or service.

Network Planning Methodology

1. Identify the applications utilized. When designing a computer network, you may be required to support such diverse environments such as Enterprise Resource Management (ERM), Internet telephony, Instant Messaging (IM), Email and others.

It is important to discuss the applications that will, or may, be utilized in the short-term as well as the long-term. This information is used, in turn, for estimating the software, hardware, and traffic requirements.

2. Compute Traffic & Demand Requirements: Computing traffic requirements include several factors. A few points to consider include the following:

• Identify and document major traffic sources.
• Categorize traffic as local, distributed, client/server, peer-to-peer, terminal/host or server/server.
• Estimate bandwidth requirements for each application.
• Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for each application
• Reliability requirements.

3. Scalability Requirements: Scalability refers to the extent of network growth that should be supported. For a corporate network, scalability is a major consideration. Provisions must be made to add users, applications, additional sites, external network connections...

4. Geographical considerations: Consider the LAN and WAN links that may be required. Offices that are separated by large distance (for example one in Delhi and another in New York) can be linked together by a WAN (Wide Area Network) link. Similarly, building complexes within a compound can be linked by a LAN (Local Area Network) link.

LANs fall within the premises of a Company whereas WANs are typically leased and maintained by a telecom. Hence, WANs are costly in bandwidth terms and need to be planned and designed with utmost care to minimize resource consumption.

5. Availability: The availability of a network needs to be given careful consideration while designing a network. It is the amount of time a network is available to users over a period of time and is often a critical design parameter. 

Availability has direct relation with the amount of redundancy required. Another important factor that needs to be considered when computing availability requirements is the business loss to the company due to unavailability of the network for a given amount of time. A right balance needs to be arrived at such that the profitability is maintained.

High availability is a system design protocol and associated implementation that ensures a certain absolute degree of operational continuity during a given measurement period. Systems design is the process or art of defining the hardware and software architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data for a computer system to satisfy specified requirements.

Availability refers to the ability of the user community to access the system, whether to submit new work, update or alter existing work, or collect the results of previous work. If a user cannot access the system, it is said to be unavailable. Generally, the term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable.

For more information, please go to our Disaster Recovery Planning section. We go in-depth about Business Continuity Planning.

6. Security and Accessibility: Security and accessibility are among the important design phase steps. A security plan needs to be devised that meets the required security specifications. Items to consider:

• A list of network services that will be provided such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN), FTP, Web, e-mail....
• Identify the security administrator.
• Train employees on the security policies & procedures.
• In case of a security breach, a recovery plan should be in place.

7. Budgetary Considerations: Our cost/benefit engineering practices at this stage will have far-reaching effects on the overall performance and long-term viability of your wireless network. Given the budget, inSync will provide a state-of-the-art network with an eye towards the future business goals of the client..

inSync provides the project management necessary to insure a successful network launch. Our engineers design, configure, integrate & maintain computer networks. We provide firm fixed price quotes on all equipment, hardware & software, required to implement your computer network.

How may we help you?

Please contact us for a free consultation on how a relationship with inSync can benefit your company.

Work Hard. Play Hard. Worry Less. inSync.