Troubleshooting Approach

By selecting a proper troubleshooting approach, the networking team can solve a network
problem quicker and more effectively. The most common troubleshooting approaches are
"Top-Down" approach, "Bottom-Up" approach and "Divide and Conquer" approach.
These approaches are working from the perspective of the OSI model. When troubleshooting,
the networking administrator can individually troubleshoot every layer of the OSI model
using simple methods. (Tan, 2010)
Selecting a troubleshooting approach can be guided by certain guidelines, however, a
network administrator him/herself can choose whichever approach he/she wants to choose.
Beside, the guidelines only assists the network administrator to select the best approach for
the purpose of saving time and cost in the troubleshooting process.
Therefore, selecting a troubleshooting approach can be based on the complexity of the
problem, experience of the troubleshooting personnel or network administrator, and the
nature of symptoms.
Selected approach and justification
The network team has decided to use "Bottom-up" approach to identify problem area and
isolate the problem. Using this approach, the network team will start working on the bottom
layer of the OSI model which is the physical layer towards the top layer, the Application
layer.
In the physical layer, hardware means of sending and receiving data is provided. This layer
conveys the bit stream - electrical impulse or radio signals at the electrical and mechanical
level. All the physical aspects including cables and network cards are physical layer
components as well as protocols like Fast Ethernet and ATM. (Tan, 2010)
By starting with physical layer, network team can first try to see if problem exists with the
physical components like cables and network cards before going up to the top layers. This is
always the best starting point in troubleshooting networks, however, the complexity of the
issue is highly dependent.

Justification of the selected approach

The network team has determined the complexity of the issue first and found that the issue
appears to be a bit complex. In addition, the team has found that the company did not have
their network design and configuration properly documented and therefore the first task was
to investigate the physical setup to obtain the overview of the company's network design.
Furthermore, the network team is not very experienced with network troubleshooting and
therefore it was best to use "Bottom-Up" approach so that the troubleshooting process goes
step by step from the lower level to most upper level.

Routing Protocols
"A routing protocol is a set of rules or standard that determines how routers on a network
communicate and exchange information with each other, enabling them to select best routes
to a remote network." (orbit-computer-solutions.com) Routing protocols are responsible for
several activities including network discovery and updating and maintaining routing tables.
Routing protocols are used in Dynamic type of routing where by route is built automatically
by the routing protocols following the rules and standards defined by the routing protocol.
Routers learn about networks from neighbour routers or from administrator through dynamic
and static routing respectively. (firewall.cx)
In static routing, the network administrator manually enters the routes in the routing table
while in dynamic routing, the routers automatically builds the routing table and routes using
routing protocols. Hence, routing protocols are only used in dynamic routing to enable
routers to dynamically discover and maintain routes, calculate routes, distribute routing
updates to other routers and reach agreement with other routers about the network topology.
(firewall.cx)
The following are some of the advantages of dynamic routing:

Figure 1: Advantages of Dynamic routing

Source: http://www.orbit-computer-solutions.com/Routing-Protocols.php

Nevertheless, Dynamic routing also has some disadvantages which are:

High bandwidth utilisation.

Increase processor overhead and memory utilisation.

Types of Routing Protocols

Routing Protocols can be classified according to their characteristics. The following are
classification of routing protocols from (ciscopress.com, 2014):

Purpose: Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) and Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP)
Operation: Distance vector protocol, Link-state protocol and Path-vector protocol
Behaviour: Classful and Classless protocol.

Figure 2: Hyrachical view of Dynamic Routing Protocol Classification

Source: http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=2180210&seqNum=7

Recommendation of Routing Protocol

Based on the findings, the network team recommends the use of Enhanced Interior Gateway
Routing Protocol (EIGRP). This routing protocol designed by Cisco is commonly used in
many large Enterprise networks. According to Cisco.com, "EIGRP maintains all of the
advantages of distance-vector protocols, while avoiding the concurrent disadvantages."
(cisco.com)
EIGRP is an enhanced distance-vector protocol and has several advantages. Some of the
advantages of EIGRP to other routing protocols are:

Figure 3: Advantages of EIGRP

Source: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/ios-nx-os-software/enhanced-interior-gateway-routing-protocoleigrp/index.html

Justification on the recommended Protocol

EIGRP uses a hybrid of Distance-vector and Link-state algorithms and therefore consolidates
the benefits from both classes. That being said, EIGRP avoids the disadvantages that are
found in distance vector which include concurrency and therefore reduces bandwidth
consumption.
Figure below shows some characteristics of different dynamic routing protocols:

Figure 4: Characteristics of some dynamic routing protocols

Source: http://www.firewall.cx/networking-topics/routing/routing-protocols.html

EIGRP is an ideal choice of routing protocol because it is fast, consumes little resources and
supports VLSM which is also recommended to be used by networking team from above
chapters.
Two years ago, it would be said that this protocol has a disadvantage of proprietary and that
hardware (routers) should be changed in order to use this routing protocol. That shouldn't be a
problem anymore since Cisco has opened up EIGRP and it is currently an open standard
(Adler, 2013), therefore, it can be implemented without changing any hardware or design of
the current network.

References
Adler, S. (2013, 3 11). Cisco Blog. Retrieved 8 6, 2014, from Cisco.com:
http://blogs.cisco.com/getyourbuildon/cisco-opens-up-eigrp/
cisco.com. (n.d.). Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP). Retrieved
8 6, 2014, from cisco.com: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/ios-nxos-software/enhanced-interior-gateway-routing-protocol-eigrp/index.html
ciscopress.com. (2014, 3 24). Cisco Networking Academy's Introduction to
Routing Dynamically. Retrieved 8 6, 2014, from ciscopress.com:
http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=2180210&seqNum=7
firewall.cx. (n.d.). Routing Protocols. Retrieved 8 6, 2014, from firewall.cx:
http://www.firewall.cx/networking-topics/routing/routing-protocols.html
orbit-computer-solutions.com. (n.d.). IP Routing Protocols. Retrieved 8 6, 2014,
from
orbit-computer-solutions.com:
http://www.orbit-computersolutions.com/Routing-Protocols.php
Tan, R. (2010, 4 13). Troubleshooting networking using the OSI model. Retrieved
8
6,
2014,
from
infosecisland.com:
http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/3667-Troubleshooting-networkingusing-the-OSI-model.html