Collecting Data As Much As Possible in Preparing Computer Network Infrastructure Design For The Corporate Organization
Network Design - Network Diagram
Computer network Design might be odd words in the early 1970s for mostly people in the world. Computer network allows computers to share the resources and communicate each other through a computer network infrastructure. Computer network was first designed and introduced in the early 1970s by ARPA (Advance Research Projects Agency) for US Department of Defense. But today, probably everyone which has a computer or a laptop which is connected to the internet is in the computer network, connected to the world trough a very complicated system network infrastructure.
Probably you’ve had already a simple computer network at home which connects your computer or laptop to the Internet connection whether a dial-up connection or broadband cable connection to your ISP (Internet service provider). Or even today the use of wireless router at home networking is very common to share internet using wireless adapters whether wireless PCI adapters; wireless USB adapters; or PCMCIA wireless adapters.
Corporate network in a large organization, the network will include multiple remote sites (multiple LAN) that connect each other through the WAN link connection. If you work in the office of a company which has a system computer and network computer infrastructure and you as the system administrator must know exactly the network design and network diagram which had been designed for you by the system and network engineer consultant.
Assume that you work as a network administrator and a system administrator of a mining company which has a headquarter office at New York and two mine sites at Brazil and Guinea. How can you design the network and preparing connection of the network for a computer network that link the headquarter office to both mine sites across geographical borders through WAN links services such as frame relay; ISDN network; or even leased line connection? Off course you will also think about securing your network with the firewall.
The conditions of both mine sites are ground zero, no computer network at all and even no network infrastructure. However, the headquarter office has already had a simple computer network with 5 computers in a simple local area network. Basically it is easier to start designing the computer network project from the beginning instead of tailoring the existing computer network infrastructure. So what can you do with this computer network project?
Well, you have a lot of work to do and the first thing you need to do is collecting the data. Collecting as much data as possible is very essential for you to start designing the network infrastructure. You need to start with a brain storming by collecting the questions things like:
1. How many users will be at the headquarter office and at both mine sites. This is important for you to design the IP address allocation for your computer network infrastructure.
2. How good and how reliable the electricity power supply is. This is important to design a power backup in case of the main electricity power is unavailable to allow the computer network system keeps running or at least not much downtime.
3. Are there public telephone services available at both mine sites? We need this for a leased line connection by using Point-to-Point services; or circuit switched network services; or you can use packet switched network services for your global corporate WAN connection. Usually the mine site is in a remote area, it means that you need to liaise with the third party for a satellite services for your Wide area network connection.
4. Will you allow the employee or the management level only access the computer network remotely when they are travelling for a company business? You need to design the endpoint security or firewall security to allow only the authorized users access the company computer network.
5. Sit down with the management and discuss how critical the computer network system will run. This will help you design the redundancy system; whether you need to use the cluster system; load balance or no redundancy system at all due to budget limitation. Service Level Agreement must be made for all the services you will design in your computer network design.
6. If the computers are already available, examine if they have already equipped with LAN adapters built into the computers or not. Today, the brand new computers have built-in LAN card and the brand new laptops have already built-in a wireless adapters – a Wi-Fi card.
7. How the locations of the buildings; are they separate far away each other and how far. You need this data to allow you design the LAN network and the well planning network cabling or probably you need to design a wireless local area network to support your computer network infrastructure.
8. Make some interviews to all department key users how they will manage the data. For example the finance department, how secure they would like to protect the critical data? You need to perform a risk security assessment that will affect your computer network design, whether you need to create a network segment for finance department or not.
9. And still a lot including the need of thinking about the management of the information security system, ensuring that the system will have a proper security protection against security threats. You can collect as much data as possible before you start for a network design of your company’s computer network infrastructure.
When you have collected as much data you need as possible, you can start designing your computer network infrastructure based on the data you have collected. It looks complicated, unlike building a simple home network; protecting any threats you can simply add an internet security adapter which is available at the market should be appropriate.
MCSE & CCNA engineer
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