Computer Network Infrastructure

Implementing A Computer Network Infrastructure In An Organization – Including The Physical And Logical Network

A computer network infrastructure consists of many interrelated technologies and systems. Network administrators must become proficient in these technologies to maintain, support, and troubleshoot network functioning.

A computer network infrastructure is a set of physical and logical components that provide the basis for connectivity, security, routing, management, access, and other integral features on a network.

Physical Infrastructure

A network’s physical infrastructure is its topology—the physical design of the network along with hardware components such as:

Network cabling, which is suitable to the network topology you design. For example if your wired backbone is using Gigabit Ethernet, you should use Cat5e network cable that supports gigabit speed.

Network devices such as:

• Routers, allow the interlink communication between local network segments which are commonly via WAN cloud.
• Switches and Bridges, allow hosts connecting each other to communicate through appropriate TCP/IP protocol
• Servers, includes DNS servers (which are commonly integrated in active directory), DHCP servers (to provide IP address configuration detail to the clients), Exchange servers, hosts and so on.

The physical infrastructure also includes technologies such as Ethernet network, 802.11b wireless network, Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), all of which define methods of communication over certain types of physical connections.

Logical Infrastructure

The logical infrastructure of a network is composed of the many software elements that connect, manage, and secure hosts on the network. The logical infrastructure allows for communication between computers over the pathways that are described in the physical topology.

Examples of Logical infrastructure include the following components:

1. Domain name system (DNS); is a hierarchical naming system for identifying Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) hosts on the Internet. DNS is essential to the operation of Active Directory (directory service) in Windows 2003 and Windows .NET Server.
2. Directory services, providing directory services for user authentication and authorizations to logon and access network resources.
3. Clients software that connect to the clients to the servers, and so on.
4. The protocols such as TCP/IP protocols, network protocols which is very popular and mostly used as network protocols for many network platforms such as Windows, Linux, Unix, and others.
5. Network security systems such as:

• If you deploy windows server infrastructure, you should deploy a windows update system which will automatically updates all the clients on the network – downloaded from the WSUS server.
• Internet and Virus protection system which will protect the network from any kinds of viruses, malwares, spyware, and other internet threats. The deployment of the corporate version of the internet network security is a must besides the regulation of the internet usage policy. Unlike the corporate need, for home network you can deploy an internet security adapter – a security appliance from D-Link; or you can just proactively protect the computers at home with BitDefender internet security software.
• The management of information security, which will protect the corporate information assets. Information is an asset which, like other important business assets, has value to the corporate and consequently needs to be suitably protected.

As the administrator, you should understand all the technology involved in the network infrastructure. You should be able to design the IP address according to the physical network sites and the number of hosts on each site. And being able to troubleshoot the network related problems is a must, including connectivity problems, addressing problems, access, security, or name resolution problem.

And to maintain the business continuity, the proper disaster recovery planning is also very essential. Disaster Recovery planning provides a framework for the recovery of IT infrastructure from a specific disaster that can be both large and small in scale.

See also:

• introducing business firewall Cisco’s RV082 Dual WAN VPN Router
• basic knowledge about setting up a router
• how to choose the best wireless routers