Designing the Network

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 make involve the following network hardware:

• Number of host machines your network can support

• Type of network media to use: Ethernet, token ring, FDDI, and so on

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

• Types of hosts the network supports: standalone and dataless

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

How you plan the network hardware is outside the scope of this manual. For assistance, refer to the manuals that come with your hardware.

Network Planning Tasks

After you complete your hardware plan, you are ready to begin network planning, from the software perspective.

As part of the planning process, you must do the following:

1. Obtain a network number and, if applicable, register your network domain with the InterNIC.

2. Devise an IP addressing scheme for your hosts, after you receive your IP network number.

3. Create a list that contains the IP addresses and host names of all machines on your network. Use the list to build network databases.

4. Determine which name service to use on your network: NIS, NIS+, DNS, or the network databases in the local /etc directory.

5. Establish administrative subdivisions, if appropriate for your network.

6. Determine if your network is large enough to require routers, and, if appropriate, create a network topology that supports them.

7. Set up subnets, if appropriate, for your network.

The remainder of this chapter explains how to plan your network.