THE ART OF NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

RUSS WHITE / DENISE DONOHUE

What impression does a companys network leave? It might show that the business
is conservative in its approach to technology, or that it risks being bleeding edge. Is
it concerned with practical matters, using whatever works so long as it works? Or
does this company embrace technology leadership?
What is the perception of the network within the company? What is the perception
of the technology stance beyond the company? If competitors see your network
design, will they wonder why they didnt think of it, or just wonder why it works at
all? If a potential partner sees your network design, will that partner see the future
or the past?
Business Drives Technology
Before an architect designs a building, he or she needs to know something about
how it will be used. Will it be a professional building or a home? If its a home, what
are the needs of the family that will live there? How many bedrooms, bathrooms,
and common areas will they need? Are there any special requirements, such as
handicap adjustments? Likewise, before you design a network you should learn
about the business functions it will support. Networks dont exist in a vacuum; they
exist to perform a service, connecting people and things together.
From an operational standpoint, a well-designed and well-run network has the
capability to transform how an enterprise does business.
Many IT people shrink from the thought of becoming business-y, but to create a
network that functions as a business enabler rather than a cost center, you must
start with the underlying business goals and build on that. You must be able to ask
the right questions about businessand understand the answers well enough to
translate them into design decisions. When you have a good understanding of the
business environment, you are able to choose technologies that benefit the
company and design networks that move it forward.
The Business Environment
To learn about a company, you need to look at both the company itself (the internal
environment) and the market in which it operates (the external environment).
Understanding the internal environment will give you the ability to determine what
technologies will help the business thrive, and design the network to support those.
Looking at the external environment, the industry in which the business operates,
will allow you to make an educated guess about future changes and design the
network to support those also. Understanding the competitive landscape and
evaluating the company against others in the field gives you a good idea of where
the industry is headed and what capabilities the business will need in order to be
competitive.

Given that architecture happens at the intersection of business and technology,

youre going to need information from both sides of the house to really understand
the challenges ahead.
Begin with basic information about the networking environment. How big is the
companyhow many users are connected to the network, how many sites, and
where are they located? To learn about enterprise goals and future plans, you will
probably need to look outside of IT. All too often, the IT staff learns about a
business initiative
only when theyre asked to make last-minute changes to the network! Find out the
corporate goals and business strategies. Look for vision statements. Learn where
the company is investing its resourcesits money, people, time, and technologies
because that shows what is important to them. Look for information on business
initiatives planned or in progress, and ask about the drivers for those initiatives.
For the external environment, turn your focus to customer expectations. It is likely
that the way you interact with your customers has changed in recent years in
response to changes in technology and expectations. If you learn how and where
changing expectations affect the company, your network design can provide the
capability to meet those expectations.
The Competition
Every company is now an information company, no matter what other service it
might offer, or what product it might make. When you understand the competitive
forces facing a business, you can build agility into the network to minimize the
effects of events outside the businesss control.
Use the same sources as before, but ask different questions.
Who are the companys biggest competitors?
How has the competitive landscape changed in the past several years?
Which new companies have entered the field and which have dropped out?
What has your business done in response to those changes?
How and where does the company interact with the information it needs to
survive?
After you have this information, do some research on the competition. Find out how
they are performingare they growing, shrinking, or pretty stable? Are they
profitable or struggling? If possible, find out something about the technologies used
by competitors. Understanding your competitors helps you to understand what the
future may hold for your company. It will also give you a basis for explaining how
your design will help the business compete.
For each application you find, ask questions such as the following to understand the
requirements it places on the network.
How well is the application working today? Are there any issues with slowness, or
are there other things that might prevent the application from running optimally?
How much data does it produce, and what type of data is it?

 Where does the data need to go? How fast does it need to get there? How
important is consistency in the delivery of data?
Does the applications traffic need to be separated from other data, or can it be
mixed?
Where in the life cycle is the application? Is it just installed, in midlife, or in the
process of being replaced?
What of the future requirements for those applications? How longwill they be in
use?
These types of questions allow an architect to determine just how far the network
should be driven to support each application. The answers may leadto technical
recommendations for changes in things such as quality of service, speeds and
feeds, network topology, and virtualization. An important application that will soon
be replaced might not merit a large scale redesignwhereas an important application
that is just being deployed likely would.
Network Evaluation
You will want to evaluate the current state of the network. Depending onfamiliar
you are already with the environment, this might be as exhaustia complete
assessment, or it might simply entail sitting back and taking a birds-eye view of
the network. You may already have a good idea of whportions of the network will
need changing; if so, concentrate on those. dont forget to gather information about
all parts of the network that migbe affected by a changing design or a new
application.
In your evaluation, be sure to include three things:
Profile of the current network
Profile of the current support staff
Profile of the current network management, monitoring, and support methods
It obviously makes sense to look at the network, but you might be wondering why
you should bother to examine support staff and the network monitoring. The
answer is that these may have an impact on the new network design. You may
need to tailor network design to the companys ability to support it. You may need
to recommend changes or additions to the current staff, or training for them. More
than likely you will need to recommend changes additions to the network
management tools or processes. People have been trying to perfect network
management for as long as there have been networks, yet there is almost always
room for improvement.