What does this mean to a network administrator today? The distinction between LAN and WAN (wide area networking) protocols is beginning to blur. In Chapter 4, "Upgrading Strategies and Project Management," you'll find more information about surveying the user community to come up with a plan that places resources where they are needed. 2. Will you need clustered servers to provide for a high degree of uptime, or do your users' applications not suffer from a temporary loss of the use of a server? © 2020 Graphical Networks LLC 814 W. Diamond Ave., Suite 370 Gaithersburg, MD 20878 USA. A network diagram can be either physical or logical. Logical network diagrams. In addition to dedicated links between sites, the use of Virtual Private Networking (VPNs) is becoming a popular method for connecting to remote sites. As time has passed, other technologies, such as Token-Ring, have become minor players in the LAN world. What are the resources you'll need? > Today, as long as the physical underlay is robust and scalable, the emphasis is on designing logical or virtual topologies. So if you think you've blocked file transfers by disabling FTP access through the firewall, this example should show that you really do need to do a thorough evaluation of any new application or service you will allow on the network. Its components include Fiber, ISDN and Ethernet (Johnson, 2002). You can design and install a new network from scratch, or you can upgrade an existing network. Each application should have a written risk assessment document that points out potential security problems, if any. So when thinking about a network protocol, remember that it's not just one protocol you need to worry about. Will you need to allow an Internet connection for just your internal network's users, or will use you need to allow outside vendors access to your network? It has grown from a modest specification endorsed by Intel, DEC, and other vendors, such that it now can be considered a WAN protocol. Can your users tolerate a little downtime now and then due to network problems, or is it necessary to provide a high-availability network? These factors make up the logical design for your network. It shows subnets, VLAN IDs, subnet masks and IP addresses. With 10Gigabit Ethernet, you can use TCP/IP not only to create a local area network backbone, but to extend that reach to a metropolitan area network. If most of the network traffic you expect to see will come from the engineering department, you'll need to provide that department with a large data pipe. > In the future you can expect that the next version (IPv6) will start to find its way from the core of the Internet out to the edge, where your network resides. This is partly due to the rapid growth of the Internet, and the necessity of most businesses of having a Web presence, as well as the large number of vendors that have adopted this protocol suite. For example, ARCnet is now used mostly in vertical-market applications (such as on the factory floor, or for point-of-sale cash registers). With this easily customizable template, users can represent any existing logical network design. For example, utilize dual fiber-optic uplinks from the wiring closets to the core switches. Another important factor your management will probably force you to consider is cost—you can't forget the budget. A logical network diagram usually shows network devices like routers, firewalls, and voice gateways. Sub-interfaces, VLANs, virtual and tunnel interfaces separate traffic, and also allow various forwarding and security methods to be applied to individual flows. More information about securing your network can be found in Chapter 48, "Security Issues for Wide Area Networks," and Chapter 49, "Firewalls.". You should always be proactively looking for potential single points of failure and doing something to fix them. For a detailed introduction to TCP/IP, see Chapter 25, "Overview of the TCP/IP Protocol Suite"; Chapter 26, "Basic TCP/IP Services and Applications"; and Chapter 28, "Troubleshooting Tools for TCP/IP Networks.". Physical network diagrams (as is common in DCIM software) depict the physical topology of the network and how the physical devices (or objects) are connected. If you are creating a new network and purchasing new applications, you will probably spend most of your time considering the licensing and other financial costs (training users, network personnel, and so on). What will it cost to evaluate what kind of services user groups need to access from the Internet? If you want to provide a central name resolution service, you might choose the Domain Name Service (DNS), which is covered in Chapter 30, "Network Name Resolution." In an existing network, will you keep the current protocol or upgrade to a different protocol standard? In a logical diagram, you’ll generally visualize the following elements in your logical network topology: As the information contained within logical network diagrams corresponds to the L3 (Layer 3) of the OSI model; L2 devices (such as switches) are not depicted in an L3 or logical network diagram. Still, for the long haul—for example, between different cities—other protocols such as ATM and Frame Relay will come into play. Have a strong work ethic & excellent people sk…, Graphical Networks recently introduced our new netTerrain DCIM bundles: they give you the support you need to tackl…, Missed today's webinar on how our outside plant module netTerrain OSP helps you better manage your circuits and cab…, With so much change, it’s all but impossible to keep the infrastructure documented by hand and without some degree…, the following elements in your logical network topology, network mapping software (such as netTerrain), Meet Your SLAs with Network Diagram Software, How Network Diagrams & Documentation Overhaul Your Workflow, No Network Diagrams?