Top-Down Network Design

by Priscilla Oppenheimer

Network Design Templates

Part I (Identifying Your Customer's Needs and Goals) of Top-Down Network Design presents many tables that you can use while gathering information to help you develop a network design. You can fill out the following tables as you gather design information. See the book for more detail on each table.

Chapter One: Analyzing Business Goals and Constraints

Table 1-1 Network Applications

Name of Application	Type of Application	New Application? (Yes or No)	Criticality	Comments

Chapter Two: Analyzing Technical Goals and Tradeoffs

Table 2-3 Network Applications Technical Requirements

Name of Application	Cost of Downtime	Acceptable MTBF	Acceptable MTTR	Throughput Goal	Delay must be less than:	Delay variation must be less than:	Comments

Chapter Three: Characterizing the Existing Internetwork

Table3-1 Building Wiring

Building Name
Location of telecommunications closets:
Location of cross-connect rooms and demarcations to external networks:
Logical wiring topology (structured, star, bus, ring, centralized, distributed, mesh, tree, or whatever fits):
Vertical Wiring:
	Coaxial	Fiber	STP	Category 3 UTP	Category 5 or 6 UTP	Other
Vertical Shaft 1
Vertical Shaft 2
Vertical Shaft n
Horizontal Wiring:
	Coaxial	Fiber	STP	Category 3 UTP	Category 5 or 6 UTP	Other
Floor 1
Floor 2
Floor 3
Floor n
Work-Area Wiring:
	Coaxial	Fiber	STP	Category 3 UTP	Category 5 or 6 UTP	Other
Floor 1
Floor 2
Floor 3
Floor n

Table 3-2 Availability Characteristics of the Current Network

	MTBF	MTTR	Date and Duration of Last Major Downtime	Cause of Last Major Downtime
Enterprise (as a whole)
Segment 1
Segment 2
Segment 3
Segment n

Table 3-3 Bandwidth Utilization by Protocol

	Relative Network Utilization	Absolute Network Utilization	Broadcast/Multicast Rate
Protocol 1
Protocol 2
Protocol 3
Protocol n

Table 3-4 Response-Time Measurements

	Node A	Node B	Node C	Node D
Node A	X
Node B		X
Node C			X
Node D				X

Chapter Four: Characterizing Network Traffic

Table 4-1 User Communities

User Community Name	Size of Community (Number of Users)	Location(s) of Community	Application(s) Used by Community

Table 4-2 Data Stores

Data Store	Location	Application(s)	Used by User Community (or Communities)

Table 4-3 Network Traffic Flow

	Destination 1		Destination 2		Destination 3		Destination n
	Mbytes per Second	Path	Mbytes per Second	Path	Mbytes per Second	Path	Mbytes per Second	Path
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source n

Table 4-4 Network Applications Traffic Characteristics

Name of Application	Type of Traffic Flow	Protocol(s) Used by Application	User Communities That Use the Application	Data Stores (Servers, Hosts, and so on)	Approximate Bandwidth Requirement for the Application	QoS Requirements

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