An organization must count various crucial factors when designing an efficient, secure, and scalable network. To increase your network design ROI and optimize the process, Cisco training is crucial. It's the current enterprise landscape’s only sure-fire way to enable network designers to ensure that an organization's communication networks can scale and adjust to the demands of new and innovative services. Using an organized design methodology and following hierarchical design principles, designers can establish networks that are both supportable and manageable.
The Basics - Identifying Network Design
There are three critical elements that a network design comprises of:
Design Overview
Information networks and computers are critical for any business to succeed. They are responsible for connecting services, support applications, and people, and provide access to the resources to make business operations more efficient. The idea is to keep up with the growing requirements of the business to design a network that offers exactly what an organization requires.
Hierarchical Network Design
This is essential to incorporate in any design plan to meet the fundamental goals. A network should follow an architecture that supports growth and flexibility. In the networking world, the benefit of using a hierarchical design is to amalgamate multiple networks through group devices. It takes the layered-approach to design these networks. The three basic layers include:
- Core: the fundamental layers responsible for connecting distributing layer devices.
- Distribution: is a layer for interconnecting local networks.
- Access: offers connectivity for end devices as well as network hosts.
Methodologies
Most network designs are broken down into three steps for a more practical approach. These are as follows:
- Identifying and understanding the distinct requirements
- Characterizing the existing system and its implications
- Designing the solution and network topology
The Role of Cisco Certification
Cisco certifications and training are quite promising when you intend to provide expertise to your in-house teams in the area of networking and hardware. For the variety of skills and expertise, it has to offer, Cisco is indeed one of the most leading choices for professionals and organizations worldwide. It helps your teams by providing unparalleled knowledge and expertise for designing and operating networks, promises career growth and is universally valid. With Cisco certification, your employees can master the skills required for designing, operating, installing, and troubleshooting a Cisco network. It gives them the proficiency to work with all sizes of business and their specific requirements for the network.
How to Increase Your Network Design ROI
To achieve a higher ROI from network design, it is important to take various other considerations into account. In addition to the right training, an organization must think through the network design to make sure it is efficient and secure.
Here are the best practices you need to consider:
Security and Connectivity
Network connectivity has evolved to mean much more than just wireless access points, and Ethernet cabled. People today need remote access to all the data and information without any boundaries. Keeping up with the security while also fulfilling that requirement can be challenging. Therefore, it needs professionals to address such issues to take care of both security and connectivity at the design phase of networking.
This includes the current location of data - whether on cloud-based solutions or in-house - the information that should be accessible, the authority who should be given the access to that information, and the types of devices where the data can be accessed. Access servers and firewalls should also be secured without compromising on the efficiency of operations.
Standardization
To ensure that a network runs smoothly, it is important that both the software and hardware involved in the network are standardized. Doing so can also cut costs required for repairs, updates, and maintenance. To find out the systems that need to be standardized first, an organization can carry out a full audit of the software, computer system, and the peripherals. The director or CEO may need to take special consideration with email programs and word processing to speed up the process without incurring additional cost.
Redundancy
Every system network should have a backup with multiple servers. Regardless of the size of an organization or the network, every network design must include mission-critical components and at least two servers as a backup. Implementing several identical servers with the same configuration can smoothly take over the other if it requires maintenance or fails to keep up with the load. Having redundant services and components for different parts of the network will ensure its security.
If an organization is working with web servers, it should have a second connection to take over if the first ones fail with the internet connectivity. Having a spare laptop, an extra wireless router or an additional switch onsite is a great practice to minimize downtime.
Growth
A network design must always have allowances to adjust futuristic growth into the system. While it isn't possible to make accurate predictions regarding the growth an organization may have, having the margin for adjustment is always a good idea.
Keep the specific organization requirement in mind before choosing the business server or designing a network. An organization with 50 employees implementing a system with a limit of 70 users isn't a great idea. Ideally, it is best to factor 20% growth in a year as far as network design allowances are concerned. Make sure this is also applicable for data backup systems and switch ports.
Disaster Recovery
Every successful network design must include a disaster recovery plan. It must also include provisions for server crash procedures and back-up for power. An efficient disaster recovery program includes details on data backup, the location where backup data is stored, and the procedure through which it is saved. The recovery plan includes, but is not limited to, office disasters, metropolitan-wide disasters, and building disasters. In most cases, critical data is backed up on a daily basis. However, in a less risky environment, this could be adjusted to a weekly backup program.
With Cisco training, designers are in a better position to support the network-based economy and design networks that are available around the clock. Moreover, they also understand the importance of information network security and the need for automation to wave off unexpected security incidents.