CSI-501
Network Design
Department Of
and Management Computer Science
and
Lecture-03 Information Technology
Analyzing Technical Goals and Tradeoff
Dr. Zeeshan Rafi
PhD MIS, MPhil IT, BS Software Engineering
Former Software Engineer
Database Administrator
System Analyst Department Of
Computer Science
Department of Computing and and
Information Systems Information Technology
Istanbul University, TR
KHAS University, TR
University of Gujrat, PK
GC University, Pk
Top-Down Network
Design
Analyzing Technical Goals and Tradeoffs
Technical Goals
• Scalability
• Availability
• Performance
• Security
• Manageability
• Usability
• Adaptability
• Affordability
Scalability
• Scalability refers to the ability to grow
• Some technologies are more scalable
• Flat network designs, for example, don’t scale well
• Try to learn
• Number of sites to be added
• What will be needed at each of these sites
• How many users will be added
• How many more servers will be added
Availability
• Availability can be expressed as a percent uptime per
year, month, week, day, or hour, compared to the total
time in that period
• For example:
• 24/7 operation
• Network is up for 165 hours in the 168-hour week
• Availability is 98.21%
• Different applications may require different levels
• Some enterprises may want 99.999% or “Five Nines”
availability
Availability Downtime in Minutes
Per Hour Per Day Per Week Per Year
99.999% .0006 .01 .10 5
99.98% .012 .29 2 105
99.95% .03 .72 5 263
99.90% .06 1.44 10 526
99.70% .18 4.32 30 1577
Availability of five-nines and other uptime percentages
• Although 100% availability is the goal yet it is unreasonable to expect
service will be available every minute of every day throughout the yea
Maintenance, upgrades and uncontrollable events
like acts of God make it impossible for a provider
to guarantee 100% uptime.
A five-nines availability service-level agreement
ISP 1 ISP 2 ISP 3
(SLA) is close; it mandates that a given service
will be unavailable for no more than 5 minutes
and 15 seconds a year.
Services covered by an SLA with four-nines
availability or 99.99% could be unavailable
52 minutes and 36 seconds per year.
Three-nines availability 99.9% allows 8 hours Enterprise
and 46 minutes of downtime per year.
• Can the customer afford this?
Availability
• Availability can also be expressed as
1- Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and
2- Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
• Availability = MTBF/(MTBF + MTTR)
• For example:
• The network should not fail more than once every 4,000 hours (166 days) and it should be fixed
within one hour
• 4,000/4,001 = 99.98% availability
Network Performance
• Common performance factors include
Bandwidth Network bandwidth determines the network's capacity of how much data in network can
possibly travel in a period of time,
Throughput network throughput measures how much data actually travels in a period of time
Bandwidth utilization In the simplest terms, network bandwidth utilization is the rate at which data can flow
through your network. Traditionally measured in bits per second (bps)
Offered load offered load is the total traffic volume the network can provided.
Accuracy The data is sent and received to the right destination
Efficiency the effectiveness of a network in achieving its objectives such as fast communication, smooth
data transfer, and minimal disruption or downtime
Delay (latency) & delay Latency refer to the amount of time it takes a bit to be transmitted from source to
variation destination.
Response time the time it takes for a network system or a computer to respond to a request or a query
initiated by a user or another system.
Bandwidth Vs. Throughput
• Bandwidth and throughput are not the same thing
• Bandwidth is the data carrying capacity of a circuit
• Usually specified in bits per second
• Throughput is the quantity of error free data transmitted per unit of
time
• Measured in bps, Bps, or packets per second (pps)
Bandwidth, Throughput,
Load
100 % of Capacity
T
h
r Actual
o
u l
dea
I
g
h
p
u
t
100 % of Capacity
Offered Load
Other Factors that Affect
Throughput
The size of packets The minimum size of an IP packet is 21 bytes (20 bytes for the header, and 1 byte of data). The
maximum size is 65,535 bytes.
Inter-frame gaps the inter-packet gap (IPG), also known as inter-frame spacing, or inter-frame gap (IFG), is a pause
between packets which may be required between network packets or network frames.
Packets-per-second PPS measures, is the maximum number of frames or packets that can be processed. Since both
ratings of devices that frames and packets often can vary in size, smaller frames/packets require a higher rate to
forward packets accomplish the same throughput.
Client speed (CPU, memory, How affective is the CPU , Memory and Hard disk is on its user end.
and HD access speeds)
Server speed (CPU, memory, How affective is the CPU , Memory and the Secondary storage devices of a server computer on its
HD access speeds) service providers end.
Network design Network design, sometimes known as network topology, is the physical, virtual, and logical
arrangement of infrastructure in an IT network.
Protocols A network protocol is a set of rules to specify how to format, send & receive data so that the
endpoints, including computers, servers, routers and virtual machines, can communicate despite
differences in their underlying infrastructures, designs or standards.
Distance the length of the shortest path between the two locations along the network.
Errors A network error is the error condition that caused a network request to fail.
Throughput Vs. Goodput “Throughput is the total quantity of
data transferred through a
• You need to decide what you mean by throughput network, including overhead data,
• Are you referring to bytes per second, regardless of
whereas goodput is the amount of
whether bytes are user data bytes or packet header bytes useful data transmitted minus
• Or are you concerned with application-layer throughput of overhead data.
user bytes, sometimes called “goodput”
Both are measured in bits per
• In that case, you have to consider that bandwidth is being “wasted” second (bps), but goodput is a
by the headers in every packet more accurate representation of
the effective data transfer rate.”
Efficiency
• How much overhead is required to deliver an amount
of data?
• How large can packets be? “overhead means any excess usage
• Larger better for efficiency (and goodput) of computing resources, such as
• But too large means too much data is lost if a packet is processing, memory, or bandwidth.
damaged
In our specific case, overhead is the
• How many packets can be sent in one bunch without an extra memory required for
acknowledgment? supplemental information that
enables the transmission of a given
message from an origin to a
destination.”
Efficiency
This standard frame is called MTU,
or Maximum Transmission Unit.
Small Frames (Less Efficient)
Smaller MTUs provide less transfer
rate, where as the jumbo frames
also have advantages.
Jumbo frames can be much larger
than 1500 bytes and unlike the
standard frame size, which was
Large Frames (More Efficient) established by IEEE 802.3, jumbo
frames do not have a standard
frame size
Delay from the User’s Point of View
• Response Time “Response time refers to the amount of
• A function of the application time it takes for a server to respond to a
client's request.
and the equipment the
application is running on, not It is measured in milliseconds, the timer
just the network starts from the moment a client sends
• Most users expect to see out a request and stops when the server
something on the screen in sends back its first response.”
100 to 200 milliseconds
Delay from the Engineer’s Point of
View • “Propagation delay is the amount
• Propagation delay of time required for a signal to be
• A signal travels in a cable at about 2/3 the speed of received after it has been sent.it
is caused by the time it takes for
light in a vacuum
the signal to travel through a
• Transmission delay (also known as serialization medium.”
delay) • The time taken to transmit a
packet from the host to the
• Time to put digital data onto a transmission line
transmission medium is called
• For example, it takes about 5 ms to output a 1,024 byte Transmission delay.
packet on a 1.544 Mbps T1 line
• the packet will be taken for the
• Packet-switching delay processing which is called
• Queuing delay processing delay.
• Queueing Delay: Time spent by
the packet at the destination's
queue.
Queuing Delay and Bandwidth
Utilization
15
Average Queue Depth
12
9
6
3
0
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Average Utilization
• Number of packets in a queue increases exponentially as utilization increases
Example
• A packet switch has 5 users, each offering packets at a
rate of 10 packets per second
• The average length of the packets is 1,024 bits
• The packet switch needs to transmit this data over a
56-Kbps WAN circuit
• Load = 5 x 10 x 1,024 = 51,200 bps
• Utilization = 51,200/56,000 = 91.4%
• Average number of packets in queue =
(0.914)/(1-0.914) = 10.63 packets
Delay Variation
• The amount of time average delay varies
• Also known as jitter
• Voice, video, and audio are intolerant of delay variation
• So forget everything we said about maximizing packet sizes
• There are always tradeoffs
• Efficiency for high-volume applications versus low and non-varying delay
for multimedia
Security
• Focus on requirements first
• Detailed security planning later (Chapter 8)
• Identify network assets
• Including their value and the expected cost associated with losing them due
to a security problem
• Analyze security risks
Network Assets
• Hardware
• Software
• Applications
• Data
• Intellectual property
• Trade secrets
• Company’s reputation
Security Risks
• Hacked network devices
• Data can be intercepted, analyzed, altered, or deleted
• User passwords can be compromised
• Device configurations can be changed
• Reconnaissance attacks
• Denial-of-service attacks
Manageability
• Fault management
• Configuration management
• Accounting management
• Performance management
• Security management
Usability
• Usability: the ease of use with which network users can access the
network and services
• Networks should make users’ jobs easier
• Some design decisions will have a negative affect on usability:
• Strict security, for example
Adaptability
• Avoid incorporating any design elements that
would make it hard to implement new
technologies in the future
• Change can come in the form of new protocols,
new business practices, new fiscal goals, new
legislation
• A flexible design can adapt to changing traffic
patterns and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements
Affordability
• A network should carry the maximum amount of traffic possible
for a given financial cost
• Affordability is especially important in campus network designs
• WANs are expected to cost more, but costs can be reduced with
the proper use of technology
• Quiet routing protocols, for example
Network Applications
Technical Requirements
Name of Cost of Acceptable Acceptable Throughput Delay Must be Delay
Application Downtime MTBF MTTR Goal Less Than: Variation
Must be Less
Than:
Making Tradeoff “Making the balancing of various factors
and decisions that impact the overall
• Scalability 20 performance, cost, manageability, security,
and scalability of a network.”
• Availability 30
• Network performance 15
• Security 5
• Manageability 5
• Usability 5
• Adaptability 5
• Affordability 15
Total (must add up to 100) 100
Summary
• Continue to use a systematic, top-down approach
• Don’t select products until you understand goals for
scalability, availability, performance, security,
manageability, usability, adaptability, and affordability
• Tradeoffs are almost always necessary
Review Questions
• What are some typical technical goals for
organizations today?
• How do bandwidth and throughput differ?
• How can one improve network efficiency?
• What tradeoffs may be necessary in order to improve
network efficiency?
