Our Delivery Process
Our Process
Computers and information networks are critical to the success of businesses, both large and small. They connect people, support applications and services, and provide access to the resources that keep the businesses running smoothly. To meet the daily requirements, standard networks are becoming quite complex and costly.
Today, the Internet-based economy often demands around-the-clock customer service. This means that business networks must be available nearly one hundred percent of the time. They must be smart enough to automatically protect against unexpected security incidents. These networks must also be able to adjust to fluctuating traffic loads to maintain consistent application response times. For standard networks it is no longer practical to construct networks by connecting standalone components without careful planning and design.
Functionally reliable networks do not happen by accident. They are the result of hard work by network designers and technicians who identify network requirements and select the best solutions and products to meet the individualized needs of that business.
The steps required to design a reliable network for our customers are as follows:
Audit: Verify the business goals and technical requirements
Determine the features and functions required to meet the needs identified in audit
Perform a network-readiness assessment
Create a solution and site acceptance test plan
Provide a project plan for our customer
After the network requirements have been identified, we begin the steps in designing a robust network for our customer as the project implementation moves forward.
When designing our network, we focus primarily on the network as a way to access the applications needed, as well as to assess customer needs in order to operate at optimal capacity.
We focus on these main requirements for our customer’s network requirements.
Our network is robust enough to stay up all the time, even in the event of failed links, equipment failure, and overloaded conditions.
Our network reliably delivers applications and provides the most robust response times from any host to any other host.
Our network is secured using our optical backbone “bubble” network design. It protects the data that is transmitted over it including the data stored on the devices that connect to it.
Our network is easy to modify to adapt to network growth and general business changes
Because failures can occasionally occur, our network provides simple troubleshooting methodology.
Of Note
The parameters of a robust and secure network requires concerted efforts by network designers and technicians, who identify network requirements and select the best solutions to meet the needs of a business.
The four fundamental technical requirements of network design are scalability, availability, security, and manageability.
Tevetron’s Covalent Connect optical architecture can be used to further divide the three-layer hierarchical connectivity into specific departments and modular areas within each department. These modules represent access layer devices in areas that have different physical or logical connectivity.
Large network design projects are normally divided into three distinct steps:
Identify the network requirements
Characterize the existing network
Design the network topology and solutions
Failure to correctly estimate the scope of a network or network upgrade of the project can greatly increase the cost and time required to implement the new applications and requirements. The functionality of the core layer is extremely important in delivery topography. The incorporation of Tevetron’s Covalent Connect optical topography and management system makes the delivery task easier.
The distribution layer represents a routing boundary between the access layer and the core layer. As with the core layer, the distribution layer goals must also be met.
In the typical hierarchical design model, it is easiest and usually least expensive to control the size of a failure domain in the distribution layer. Redundancy at the distribution layer ensures that failure domains remain small. Providing multiple connections to Layer 2 switches can cause unstable behavior in a network unless STP is enabled. Traffic filtering is one way to ensure the smooth flow of traffic between the access and the core layers. This is accomplished at the distribution layer. ACLs are commonly applied to routers to ensure that traffic flows continue, and they provide an additional level of security for the network. With ACLs enabled, the router examines each packet, and then either forwards or discards it, based on the conditions specified in the ACL.
The criteria for the decisions can include the following:
Source address
Destination address
Protocols
Upper-layer port numbers
Whether the packet is part of an established stream
In addition to providing basic connectivity at the access layer, the designer needs to consider the following:
Naming structures
VLAN architecture
Traffic patterns
Prioritization strategies
Most recent Ethernet networks use a star topology, which is sometimes called a hub-and-spoke topology
Using VLANs and IP subnets is the most common method for segregating user groups and traffic within the access layer network
Networks also need mechanisms to control congestion when traffic increases and queues for delivery
Congestion is caused when the demand on the network resources exceeds the available capacity
Classifying data at or near the source enables the data to be assigned the appropriate priority as it moves through the entire network
For networks, it is extremely important that these goals and considerations be used from the very beginning of the network design methodology. From the topology used to the level of physical access given to personnel can mean the difference between a successful network implementation and a dismal failure.