Determining the Network Hardware

When you design your network, you must decide what type of network best meets the needs of your organization. Some of the planning decisions you must make involve the following network hardware:

• The network topology, the layout, and connections of the network hardware

• The number of host systems your network can support

• The types of hosts that the network supports

• The types of servers that you might need

• The type of network media to use: Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, and so on

• Whether you need bridges or routers extend this media or connect the local network to external networks

• Whether some systems need separately purchased interfaces in addition to their built in interfaces

Based on these factors, you can determine the size of your local area network.