Design, Implementation, and Troubleshooting a

Computer Network – A Tutorial

Computer networking is broad term used for connecting an organization networking

resources to one another for effective communication between the devices as well as

the people. It may involve Local Area Networks (LAN), Wide Area Networks

(WAN), intranets, etc. Setting up a computer network may broadly be divided in to

the following sections:

1. Organizational Requirements Gathering

2. Planning and Design

3. Implementation

4. Network Security

5. Verification and Troubleshooting

6. Documentation

7. Network Training

1. Organizational Requirements Gathering: First step in providing a networking

solution to an organization to evaluate the needs and arrive at the requirements.

For example, you may need to ask the users about type of services they plan to

use, such as voice, video, ftp, Internet, LAN/WAN etc. Also, you may need to

arrive at approximate bandwidth requirements for each type of traffic and

respective priorities. You may also need to verify with the users about the

connectivity requirements to head office, remote office, clients, or customers.

Existing infrastructure needs to be assessed and taken into account for keeping

the overheads to a minimum. With all this information, "requirements

specifications" need to be developed.

2. Network Planning and Design: Network planning involves enumerating the

physical networking resources required. For example, you may need to plan for

the number of leased lines between two locations and the bandwidth required,

the traffic type and the volume of traffic being carried by this leased line. You

may also include at this stage if any prioritization of services is required. That

is, basically, you come with numbers for the organizational networking needs.

The design stage involves identifying and matching the actual physical

networking equipment with the requirements. Here, you may need to identify

the devices that are required, and also develop a sketch of the entire network

using actual devices in place. You may also need to develop recommended

configurations on each of these devices.

3. Procurement and Implementation: Here, you identify suitable vendors for the

equipment supply, place orders, and procure the equipment. Then, you

implement the network according to the previously generated network design

diagram. It may be noted that you may need to make changes to the network

diagram as necessary to incorporate any new developments. However, ensure

that your requirements specifications are updated according and use revision

numbers so that the changes are recorded properly. Popular network equipment

vendors include Cisco, Juniper, and others.

4. Network Security: This has become an essential part of network design,

recently. With the number of hacking attempts going up, the network security

needs to be incorporated at the design stage itself. The tasks involved in

implementing network security include whether the intranet is connected to the

public Internet, if so, what kind of access to be provided? The kind of

protection required for routers, switches, servers, and workstations internally.

Finding the nature of internal and external threats, etc. These days, most of the

networking equipment comes with some amount of security built inside.

Depending on the level of security required for the organization, you may need

to decide on procurement of specific security devices such as AAA server,

Firewall, setting up DMZ, etc.

5. Verification and Troubleshooting: This is one of the most important steps in the

life cycle of a computer network. After setting up the network, a network

administrator needs to verify that the network is working as intended. For this

purpose, one needs to develop test cases and verify that the implementation is

satisfactory. It is necessary to arrive at a baseline so that any future

measurements may be compared with the baseline.

6. Documentation: Though documentation is placed as the final item, it actually

starts with that of specifications requirements. All network related aspects need

to be documented properly so that any future bottle necks may be over come. A

proper documentation should involve a, customer requirements, network

specifications, network design documents, network devices configuration

documents, test and verification documents.

7. Network Training: It is essential to provide customer training as part of the

contract. It is recommended that for big organization, they sponsor one or more

employees to undergo networking courses such as Cisco Certified Network

Associate, Juniper Networking Associate, Comptia Network+, etc. It would

help in structured approach in using and maintaining the network.

You may find detailed articles on computer networking at tutorialsweb.com.