Product Description

Authorized Self-Study Guide

Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (DESGN)

Second Edition

 

Foundation learning for CCDA exam 640-863

 

Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (DESGN), Second Edition, is a Cisco®-authorized, self-paced learning tool for CCDA® foundation learning. This book provides you with the knowledge needed to design enterprise networks. By reading this book, you will gain a thorough understanding of designing routed and switched network infrastructures and services within a modular architecture.

 

In Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (DESGN), Second Edition, you will study a broad range of network design principles and guidelines. You will learn about network design in the context of the Cisco Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) framework and the Cisco Enterprise Architecture. Specific topics include campus and data center infrastructure, remote connectivity, IP addressing design, routing protocol selection, voice network design, wireless network design, and including security in your designs. An ongoing case study plus chapter-ending review questions illustrate and help solidify the concepts presented in the book.

 

Whether you are preparing for CCDA certification or simply want to gain a better understanding of network design principles, you will benefit from the foundation information presented in this book.

 

Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (DESGN), Second Edition, is part of a recommended learning path from Cisco that includes simulation and hands-on training from authorized Cisco Learning Partners and self-study products from Cisco Press. To find out more about instructor-led training, e-learning, and hands-on instruction offered by authorized Cisco Learning Partners worldwide, please visit www.cisco.com/go/authorizedtraining.

 

Diane Teare is a professional in the networking, training, and e-learning fields. She has more than 20 years of experience in designing, implementing, and troubleshooting network hardware and software and has also been involved in teaching, course design, and project management. She has extensive knowledge of network design and routing technologies and is an instructor with one of the largest authorized Cisco Learning Partners.

 

• Understand the Cisco vision of intelligent networks and the SONA framework
• Learn how to structure and modularize network designs within the Cisco Enterprise Architecture
• Design basic campus and data center networks
• Build designs for remote connectivity with WAN technologies
• Create IPv4 addressing schemes
• Understand IPv6 design
• Select the appropriate routing protocol for various modules in the Cisco Enterprise Architecture
• Design basic VoIP and IP telephony networks
• Understand wireless design principles
• Build security into your network designs

 

This volume is in the Certification Self-Study Series offered by Cisco Press®. Books in this series provide officially developed self-study solutions to help networking professionals understand technology implementations and prepare for the Cisco Career Certifications examinations.

 

Category: Cisco Press—Network Design

Covers: CCDA Exam 640-863

 

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58907 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 960 pages

About the Author

Diane Teare is a professional in the networking, training, and e-learning fields. She has more than 20 years of experience in designing, implementing, and troubleshooting network hardware and software and has also been involved in teaching, course design, and project management. She has extensive knowledge of network design and routing technologies and is an instructor with one of the largest authorized Cisco Learning Partners. She was recently the Director of e-Learning for the same company, where she was responsible for planning and supporting all the company’s e-learning offerings in Canada, including Cisco courses. Diane has a bachelor’s degree in applied science in electrical engineering (BASc) and a master’s degree in applied science in management science (MASc). She is a certified Cisco instructor and currently holds her CCNP and CCDP certifications. She coauthored the Cisco Press titles Campus Network Design Fundamentals, the three editions of Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks (BSCI), and Building Scalable Cisco Networks. She also edited the first edition of this book and Designing Cisco Networks.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Authorized Self-Study Guide Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (DESGN), Second Edition

Introduction

Modern networks are both extremely complex and critical to business success. As organizational processes continue to increase the requirements for bandwidth, reliability, and functionality from their networks, network designers are challenged to rapidly develop and evolve networks that use new protocols and technologies. Network designers are also challenged to stay current with the internetworking industry's constant and rapid changes. Designing robust, reliable, scalable networks is a necessary skill for network operators and designers in the modern organizational environment.

This book teaches you how to design enterprise networks. You will learn about network design in the context of the Cisco Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) architectural framework and Enterprise Architecture. Specific topics include campus and data center infrastructure, remote connectivity, IP addressing design, routing protocol selection, designing voice networks, wireless network design, and including security in your designs.

An ongoing case study and chapter-ending review questions illustrate and help solidify the concepts presented in this book.

This book provides you with the knowledge and skills you need to achieve associate-level competency in network design. It starts you down the path to attaining your CCDA certification, because it provides in-depth information to help you prepare for the DESGN exam.

DESGN is the first step in the design curriculum that supports the Cisco network design certification track. This book focuses on the technology and methods currently available.

Objectives of This Book

The goal of this book is to provide you with the knowledge you need to gather internetworking requirements, identify solutions, and design the network infrastructure and services to ensure basic functionality, using the principles of hierarchical network design to structure and modularize a converged enterprise network design. Design tasks might include understanding the design methodology; structuring and modularizing the network design using the Cisco Enterprise Architecture; designing the Enterprise Campus, Enterprise Data Center, Enterprise Edge, and remote modules as needed; designing an addressing plan and selecting suitable routing protocols; designing basic voice transport across the network; designing a basic wireless solution; and evaluating security solutions.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is intended for network and sales engineers who are involved in network design, planning, and implementation, and for those who plan to take the 640-863 DESGN exam toward the CCDA certification. This book provides in-depth study material for that exam. To fully benefit from this book, you should have the following prerequisite skills:

• CCNA–level knowledge (or CCNA certification), which can best be achieved by completing the related CCNA courses and using CCNA books from Cisco Press. You can find more information on the CCNA certification at http://www.cisco.com/go/ccna/.

• Knowledge of wireless networking, quality of service (QoS), and multilayer switching is highly recommended. The level equivalent to that covered in the Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks (BCMSN) course or the book Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks (BCMSN), Fourth Edition (Richard Froom, Balaji Sivasubramanian, Erum Frahim, Cisco Press, 2007) is appropriate.

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NOTE - We assume that you understand the wireless networking material in the Cisco Press book just mentioned. In Chapter 9, we include some material from that book as an introduction to wireless technology. Refer to the Cisco Press BCMSN book for more detailed information.

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• Practical experience deploying and operating networks based on Cisco network devices and the Cisco IOS.

Summary of the Contents

The chapters and appendixes of this book are as follows:

• Chapter 1, "Network Fundamentals Review," introduces some fundamental concepts and terminology that are the foundation for the material in the rest of the book.

• Chapter 2, "Applying a Methodology to Network Design," introduces the Cisco vision of intelligent networks and the Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) architectural framework. The lifecycle of a network and a network design methodology based on the lifecycle are presented, and each phase of the network design process is explored in detail.

• Chapter 3, "Structuring and Modularizing the Network," introduces a modular hierarchical approach to network design, the Cisco Enterprise Architecture. The chapter includes a detailed description of services within modular networks. Network management protocols and features are also discussed.

• Chapter 4, "Designing Basic Campus and Data Center Networks," examines the design of the Enterprise Campus and Enterprise Data Center network infrastructure.

• Chapter 5, "Designing Remote Connectivity," discusses WAN technologies and design considerations. This chapter describes the Enterprise WAN and metropolitan-area network (MAN) architectures and the Enterprise Branch and Teleworker architectures and discusses the selection of WAN hardware and software components.

• Chapter 6, "Designing IP Addressing in the Network," discusses the design of an IP version 4 (IPv4) addressing scheme. The chapter also introduces IP version 6 (IPv6) and discusses IPv4-to-IPv6 migration strategies.

• Chapter 7, "Selecting Routing Protocols for the Network," describes considerations for selecting the most appropriate network routing protocol. The chapter discusses why certain protocols are suitable for specific modules in the Enterprise Architecture. It concludes with a description of some advanced routing protocol deployment features, including redistribution, filtering, and summarization.

• Chapter 8, "Voice Network Design Considerations," introduces voice design principles and provides guidelines for a successful integrated network deployment. It begins with an overview of traditional voice architectures and features and continues with a discussion of integrated voice architectures, including VoIP and IP telephony.

• Chapter 9, "Wireless Network Design Considerations," introduces the Cisco Unified Wireless Network (UWN) architecture and discusses wireless design principles. The chapter introduces wireless technologies and explores considerations when designing Cisco UWNs in enterprise environments.

• Chapter 10, "Evaluating Security Solutions for the Network," describes network security, including threats and risks, and network security policies. The Cisco Self-Defending Network strategy for designing network security is explored, and Cisco network security solutions for enterprise networks are discussed.

• Appendix A, "Answers to Review Questions and Case Studies," contains answers to the review questions and case studies that appear at the end of the chapters.

• Appendix B, "IPv4 Supplement," provides job aids and supplementary information intended for your use when working with IPv4 addresses. Topics include an IP addressing and subnetting job aid, a decimal-to-binary conversion chart, IPv4 addressing review, and IPv4 access lists.

• Appendix C, "Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model," is a brief overview of the OSI seven-layer model.

• Appendix D, "Network Address Translation," contains information about Cisco's implementation of Network Address Translation (NAT) and port address translation (PAT).

• "Acronyms and Abbreviations" spells out the abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms used in this book.

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Customer Reviews

Too wordy
I really have some difficulty with this book. I have a lot of network design experience and a CCNA, but I need to learn the "Cisco way" of network design. This book is 930 pages long, but I think with a little effort the information within it could have been condensed into under 100 pages. there's so much to read to get to the meat of the subject. And when I look back at the pages I earmared for re-reading later, there are many pages each with just a small amount of info I want to go over again before the exam.

In at least one case, each bullet point in a list was a paragraph long, and the summary at the end of the bullet list was simply a repeat of the last bullet point. It seems that there was a concious effort to "pad out" the book.

The book does not cover all the information needed to pass this intro-level course in design (it refers you out to texts for the next level course up: eg. Building Cisco Multilayer Switch Networks). To my mind, one should not have to purchase reference material for the advanced courses in order to be able to get through the introductory courses.

All in all an overly-hard read and, at times it seems, more focussed on advertising Cisco product and positioning Cisco as a locked-in solution than on helping one through the CCDA exam.

After 570 pages of text, I have little clue as to what kinds of questions will be on the exam to come (at least in terms of the design questions).

Great for Professionals Wanting to Break Into Design Field
Diane Teare does a great job of providing necessary information and case studies to a networking professional wanting to get into the network design field. This is an associate level certification and thusly the information provided is spoon-fed to what is considered a design associate or below design associate-level person with a CCNA certification. The information is a bit wordy, but I think it lends well to learning the material and is relevant to every situation where something is repeated.

The cases are a great way to practice the theory you've learned in the chapters. Overall, a great book on Cisco network design theory. A+.