Art of Network Architecture, The: Business-Driven Design

by Russ White, Denise Donohue

The Art of Network Architecture

Business-Driven Design

 

The business-centered, business-driven guide to architecting and evolving networks

 

The Art of Network Architecture is the first book that places business needs and capabilities at the center of the process of architecting and evolving networks. Two leading enterprise network architects help you craft solutions that are fully aligned with business strategy, smoothly accommodate change, and maximize future flexibility.

 

Russ White and Denise Donohue guide network designers in asking and answering the crucial questions that lead to elegant, high-value solutions. Carefully blending business and technical concerns, they show how to optimize all network interactions involving flow, time, and people.

 

The authors review important links between business requirements and network design, helping you capture the information you need to design effectively. They introduce today’s most useful models and frameworks, fully addressing modularity, resilience, security, and management. Next, they drill down into network structure and topology, covering virtualization, overlays, modern routing choices, and highly complex network environments.

 

In the final section, the authors integrate all these ideas to consider four realistic design user mobility, cloud services, Software Defined Networking (SDN), and today’s radically new data center environments.

 

•  Understand how your choices of technologies and design paradigms will impact your business

•  Customize designs to improve workflows, support BYOD, and ensure business continuity

•  Use modularity, simplicity, and network management to prepare for rapid change

•  Build resilience by addressing human factors and redundancy

•  Design for security, hardening networks without making them brittle

•  Minimize network management pain, and maximize gain

•  Compare topologies and their tradeoffs

•  Consider the implications of network virtualization, and walk through an MPLS-based L3VPN example

•  Choose routing protocols in the context of business and IT requirements

•  Maximize mobility via ILNP, LISP, Mobile IP, host routing, MANET, and/or DDNS

•  Learn about the challenges of removing and changing services hosted in cloud environments

•  Understand the opportunities and risks presented by SDNs

•  Effectively design data center control planes and topologies

 

Kindle Edition

First published July 20, 2013

About the author

Russ White is a well-known voice in computer networking, where he advocates for simplicity, privacy, and the decentralized Internet.

Ph.D., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; MACM, Shepherds Theological Seminary; MSIT, Capella University; CCIE; CCDE; CCaR; ACM Senior Member; ISCA; Society of Christian Philosophers; Mensa

Reviews

[John Banner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the book to read if you are looking to get deep insight into specific technologies, but if you are looking to understand the trade-offs and how they relate to business needs, this book hits the spot. Easy to read (if you have some background) and does a good job of helping to point out the questions you need to ask and the trade-offs to consider when the business people come knocking on your door.

[Omar El-Mohri · Rating 5 out of 5]

For computer networking guys, this is almost a requirement, gives you a general look at each aspect of the network and how this is more of an art than a science.

[Federico Lucifredi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding — Modern network design trade-offs summed up clearly in a compact 300 pages.

I particularly enjoyed the treatment of Software Defined Networks in Chapter 17 - worth the price of admission on its own.

[Sten Leinasaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Network architecting really is an art form. I find it useful to understand the Business part of it and how to center the business in the design process.

[Edward Zambrano · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is fine for some reference about business concepts to plan&design the creation of a network. It provides some key elements to consider when you have to decide what topology to use, or maybe what technology suits you better (how to decide what protocol to use, or maybe STP vs TRILL). It also talks a bit about Datacenter networking (clos Networks and leaf&Spine topology) with nice examples that justify the use of those topologies. It also talks about how to manage a network from a business perspective... Overall a good book, but not a mustread.