WAN Design

aalvarez · ‎08-15-2003

Does Cisco have a white paper that I can present to the customer that shows design recommendation for WAN ports? I'm specifically looking for something that shows a recommendation to design no larger than an average of 70% utilization and the ability to burst to 100%, but not sustain it.

jmia · ‎08-15-2003

Hi -

What kind of network are you thinking of, Frame-Relay,ATM,STM,MPLS etc..??

Thanks -

aalvarez · ‎08-15-2003

Sorry, forgot to mention that it is frame relay.

amfernando · ‎08-26-2003

Hi,

WAN design requires more specific information on the type of traffic your proposed network will transport. Since there was not enough info. It would be difficult to determine even as to how your physical topology would look like. There are thousand of documents on the web providing WAN design techniques but nothing would help unless you have a fairly good undertsanding of the customer data traffic and the sensitivity of the data to be transported.

60%-70% is an acceptable factor for loading but if the customer has an existing network, you should try to conduct some traffic anaylsis and capacity planning so that you can cater for growth in terms of traffic as well as WAN ports.

Bursting is 100% but not sustain it is a factor you have to consider carefully specially if you have voice and legacy (i.e. SNA) traffic being transported. Time-sensitive apps specially OLTP applications should be given sufficient priority and bandwitdh reservation in your design if you intend to allow 100% bursting.