Planning Your Network

Planning a home or office computer network require considering many factors.  You need to know your current and future requirements.  Today most of the computer networks are based on the TCP/IP infrastructure.  It is very easy to customize the TCP/IP network according to your unique requirements. 

Before deploying a computer network, you need to understand your organization’s business and networking needs and also consider the future business requirements. Consider the following issues before deploying the TCP/IP network.

• You need to determine the network devices for your network. (Make sure that you are using all the devices from the same vendor for better results and compatibility.
• Decide the naming scheme and IP addressing.  Each computer in your network must have the unique name IP address.
• Decide whether your network will be wired or wireless?
• Decide which applications you want to run in your network.
• Decide how many computers will be used in the network and do you want to divide your network in the subnets.
• How will you assign the IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and other TCP/IP configurations to all the computers?  (DHCP is the best option for assigning the TCP/IP configurations and network settings to all the client computers).
• Decide which type of services you want to provide to your users like print service, file sharing, internet access, remote login, mail service, internet telephony and others.
• Plan the physical design of your network and determine which functions each computer will perform.
• Determine how the routers will be used in your network.
• You also need to consider the bandwidth, security, performance and the administration requirements of your computer network.
• You need to make the disaster recovery and the network failure plan.
• Define which level of security is required for your network.
• Define what is your budget?
• Do you plan to offer mobile access to your users?
• Do you need high speed gigabyte Ethernet connectivity?
• What’s the anticipated growth size of your network in the coming months or years?

You need to prioritize your tasks and focus on the urgent areas first.   With the planned deployment approach, you can manage, secure and administer your computer network in a better way.