Networking

With the corporate infrastructure and offices getting geographically
dispersed, wide and local area networks (WAN, LAN) are rapidly growing in
complexity. User services such as telecommuting, remote education, image
transfer, multicasting, video and voice on demand, and videoconferencing offer
tremendous efficiencies in business processes but also make new demands on the
network. Bandwidth limitations, meanwhile, place an additional premium.

Routing and switching technologies are adapting to market
needs but advances in network capacity and performance also complicates the
tasks of design and implementation and the need to optimization becomes a
critical issue. The advent of large switched networks adds another layer of
complexity to network design and provisioning, for routed, switched, and hybrid
networks. It raises many questions for the enterprise. Is it possible to achieve
high performance, optimal dedicated bandwidth, better utilization of available
address space, and a larger broadcast domain all at once? How to incorporate new
emerging technologies into existing hardware? What are the administrative
burdens associated with the different solutions? How can you prepare for future
growth?

Meeting diverse business needs

A network is seldom satisfied by a generic "one size
fits all" approach. A proper understanding of both business requirements
and networking technologies helps in assessing your needs. You have to plan a
network of the future and evolve existing ones, to maximize efficiency, lower
your costs, and enhance your business processes. The process of network planning
depends on the number of people to be connected and would typically involve
documentation of your business requirements and development of strategic network
architectures. You need to prepare capacity plans for the physical network,
including bandwidth allocations for protocols and applications.

S.R. Balasubramanium, VP-Information Systems, Hero Honda
suggests: "It is always better to plan in access because the requirements
seem to always increase faster than expectations. If you have 100 employees
today, plan for 200. We have planned our systems in such a way that we don’t
have to worry about expandability at least for the next three years."

Design a robust network

To prepare a network design, you need to identify the
specific technologies to be used and how these technologies are to be configured
and implemented. Deliverables would include technology selection, transport
protocol, topology recommendations, and a forecast of future capacity demands.
Besides hardware and software component selection, you need to prepare complete
engineering bills of materials, and supporting documentation. A detailed plan
needs to specify design configuration requirements, including router and switch
setup, rack and hub layouts, wiring centers, and cable plants.

With the various product, technology and changing network
bandwidth and speed requirement models, it is not an easy task to decide on a
specific product and vendor. Ramana of Cisco says: "With the number of
product variations within and across vendors, it is extremely difficult for IT
managers to decide on the right choice of product to invest in. This is
accentuated by the fact that incremental advantages are marginal, so there is
always a better option with an incremental advantage; which is not easy for the
IT manager to ignore."

End-user requirements from application and number of users
per location change drastically, sometimes by factors of multiples, which puts a
lot of pressure on the IT Manager, to make assumptions and factor into network
growth design requirements.

Systems integration and support

Stable vendor support services are an important factor in the
IT manager’s decision making process. Network equipment suppliers should be
forced to provide local services for replacement of parts, global standards for
on-site services through qualified support personnel. In the absence of this,
enterprises will need to factor in unplanned downtimes, which no management will
accept as they fail to justify the investments in networked operations. "In
cases of extremely large network designs, it is advisable to ask for a pilot
implementation; so that the features and functionality indicated by vendors are
proven in case specific needs," says Ramana.

Service providers are investing in service offerings for
network related managed services. By a quality service delivery by the providers
and tightly defined and measured service level agreements by enterprises, we
should see a quantum leap in outsourced managed networks. With optimal costs of
service providers by virtue of unfettered large-scale engagements, it would only
create a win-win solution for the service providers and the end-user
enterprises.

A DQ report