theoretical network design vs real life network design

Theoretical Network Design vs Real Life Network Design

We all learn about different aspects of the world in books/classrooms/academia, but sometimes what we learn about there doesn’t really match up with how it really plays out in the real world.

Now more than ever your WAN (Wide Area Network) is more vital to your business AND your personal life than you could ever imagine.  WANs are basically the fundamental plumbing of the internet.  Yes, that wonderful and yet sometimes insidious world of the internet.

Network Design 101

The theoretical, book-learned way to design a Wide Area Network
1.  Gather the network requirements from your team and all stakeholder teams
2.  Find a list of vendors who can possibly meet your network requirements.
2a. Maybe issue an RFI/RFQ/RFP.
3.  Have a virtually infinite number of meetings to finalize on which vendor is the best.
4.  Select the best WAN service provider
5.  Negotiate the best price possible.
6.  Implement the network.
7.  Live happily ever after with a solid, reliable, high functioning, super fast, and low maintenance WAN.

The real life high level steps of Wide Area Network Design
1. Figure out what functionality/features/goals are needed, important, and wanted.
2. Find out what you (or your company, as the case might be) will be allowed to spend from your IT Manager, IT Director, VP of IT, CIO, or CFO.
3. Reduce everything you wanted in step #1 to fit in the budget of what was given to you in step #2.
3a. Beat your vendors down as much as humanly possible to get more of what you wanted in step #1 with the same money from step #2.
4. Implement the network.
5. Explain to the people who set the budget in step #2 why the network doesn’t work as well as it could.
6. Repeat step #5 every month.

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