Draft Outline for "Best Practice Guide"

DS3.3.2 Part 2, Current Good Practice for Campus Networks

Editor: Main.RobertStoy

"Upstream" connections

Bandwidth and utilisation

Some ideas about the proper dimensioning of a site's connection(s) to its network providers such as an NREN or a regional network.

Advanced features

Multicast

QoS mechanisms (diffserv, local QoS)

Interfaces

Static/dynamic routing

Filters

MiddleBoxes

Firewalls

Traffic Shapers

Network Address Translators (NATs)

Proxies

Campus Backbone Design

Bridging vs. Routing

Bridging Issues

Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP)

Routing (non-)optimality

Rapid STP

Turning off RTP and the risks of doing so

VLANs

Routing

"In Hardware" vs. "In Software" - be careful when turning on features

The one-armed router and other topology traps

Cabling

Fiber vs. Copper

Old cables vs. new transmission technologies

Wireless networking

802.11b/g/a

Efficiency and rates to expect

Channel usage and contention

Planning and building large networks

Duplex modes and auto-negotiation

Why people used to recommend against auto-negotiation in the past

Why turning off auto-negotiation is mostly a Bad Idea today

Hosts, Adapters, OS Tuning

Best Practices for User Support

Hints for communicating with end-users

Understand user expectations and goals

Don't assume all users are dumb

Self-help tools and documentation for users

Handling issues outside one's domain of responsibility

When to raise issues with the NREN/PERT

Monitoring and measurement

Proactive vs. reactive

Tools

Network usage monitoring

MRTG

Cricket

Netflow

...

Traffic capture and analysis

Ethereal

tcpdump

Performance measurement

ping

Iperf

NDT

Traceroute

– Main.SimonLeinen - 20 Apr 2005