Network Desing Steps

Us microsoft visio this program is awesome for designing networks with drag-drop features includeed right down to configuring ip address, with subnet mask gateway included

is this Windows Active Directory designing? if so, there is no perfect design for a network.

A network is not just physical structure and hardware. There are AD design and structure, DNS placement, security design both WAN and LAN, server role design and placement,user requirements, domain/forest design, domain name structure, and other design parameters all determined by the business needs.

I would gather information on the following:
1) Required applications (including OS and hardware specs required)
2) Network Policy Issues
3) Network Security Issues
4) Identify working groups and logical operating units
5) Determine remote and multi-location parameters

From the above information, you can then start to sketch out the topology and policy structure for a new / re-designed network

Then comes the fun part, proposals to get appropriate budget to implement what is required to do the job properly

Without having ALL details you can not tell if network design is good or bad. Same design may be good for small SOHO-type company, but may be bad for a big corporation. Another design may be great for a big Data Center, but will be wasted money for a small company.

Good luck,

Mike
CCNP, CCDP, CCSP, Security+, MCSE W2K, Sun SCSA, Checkpoint CSSA, etc.
http://www.ciscoheadsetadapter.com

Talk to the company and then the end users and find out what is required in OS and Software packages and also what your Budget is and then design something that will work for the environment that it is deployed in and comes in close to the Budget.

There is no [b]Perfect Design[/b] just something that works and is fairly secure within the allowed budget for the project.

Col

Okey thank you all for your answers, but lets give an example : we have mother company with 7 companies under it, each company has its own computers, applications, e-mail hosting, website
Servers and data. each company approxmitlly has upto 40 computers. companies located in diffrent areas, destance avarage of 25-30 miles, so if this a senario what and how you think this network plan or design will be ?

Point value changed by question poster.

Well again you'll need to talk to the end users to find out what Software Load is required and Management to find out what the Budget Constraints are and if you are restricted to MS only.

A T1 connection should be sufficient for all the "Daughter Companies" which themselves will need a range of servers for different items again depending on their actual work load and projected uses.

For example will each Daughter Company be hosting their own Web Page or farming this out to a specialized Hosting Company? The second option would be cheaper but may not be what is wanted. You'll also need some form of constant Uptime if they are hosting their own Web Pages as these need to be available 24/7

You could arrange a VPN back through the Parent Company if required or allow each Daughter Company its own Net Connection depending on what is required.

You'll also need to work out a very good DR Plan to make sure that in the event of the worst happening you can have everything up & running in very short order and here portable HDD's or DVD's are not really the answer. Depending on the Data load you may need an Auto Loader at each Daughter Company as well as the parent company and rotate these backups on at least a 3 set rotation with one always off site although 5 would be better with more off site.

You could go for decent Servers with Thin Clients for the Desktop but again this all depends on the End Users Needs and how much Data is going to be generated as well as your Budget.

While Optical Fiber might be a nice idea the budget may not stretch to that and you'll have to make do with a Gigabyte Network.

7 companies with a mother company and all have their own web site.

That would mean all have their own DNS name space. That posses a problem if your creating a Windows Active Directory based network. The problem is Active Directory follows the RFC for DNS naming convention. That means that when you create Active Directory by dcpromo promote a server to be a domain controller , your required to create a root domain which follows the DNS naming convention. That root domain is the first domain in the forest and other domains within that forest must follow the contigious namespace for there to be an inherent trust between domains [the domain tree] [we'll leave out DNS zones as that is another problem and we won't discuss schema or server roles as those are also problems that must be overcome to combine 7 different companies, all with their own domain name].

The real question for this design quiz is what must be accessed in the different companies by the different companies [including the mother company]. If communications between the different companies is minimal e.g. only a couple of users require access at any given time and that access is limited to a few shared folers, you can go the route of VPN into the domain where the specific users who need access are granted VPN access into that domain to access shared resource. Therefore one could use existing internet connections and not have to invest in expensive fast links or dedicated lines.

This is just one senario based upon the information you provided. Far more information about what is really needed is required for design purposes as you can see.

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