ISSUES IN NETWORK ANALYSIS AND DESIGN: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION
Someswar Kesh, Sam Ramanujan · Issues in Information Systems · 2008
Communication networks now play a critical role in our lives.The failure of these networks can cause serious financial and other losses in our lives.Therefore, it is imperative that communication networks are properly planned and designed.In this paper, we use the Network Development Life Cycle (NDLC) to facilitate a critical review of some of the important aspects of network analysis and logical design.For the analysis of network requirements we discuss how actors can be identified, the methodologies available for information elicitation, identifying the business as well as technical requirements and constraints, and flow analysis.For the logical design of networks we discuss two critical issues, viz., the hierarchical design of networks and IP addressing design issues.It is expected that the critical examination of these issues will spur further research in network analysis and design.This research is also important from a pragmatic as well as a pedagogical standpoint because practitioners and educators can use various concepts discussed in this paper.