Business and Technical Goals and

Requirements

David Tipper
Associate Professor
Department of Information Science and
Telecommunications
University of Pittsburgh
Slides 2
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dtipper/2110.html

Last Week

• Network Design is not a precise science.

– Many different types of problems
• greenfield vs. incremental,
• LAN vs. MAN vs WAN
• wired vs. wireless
• Etc.
– There can be many good answers - no best solution
– Design involves trade-offs among cost vs.
performance
• Top Down Design approach useful as a
framework
– Conceptual Model
– Logical Model
– Physical Model

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 Top Down Network Design
• Top Down Network Design
– Conceptual Model
• Objectives
– Business Goals, Technical Goals
• Requirements
– Business (e.g.,support XYZ application), Technical (availability,
delay, bandwidth, security, etc.,)
• Constraints
– Business (organizational, budget, etc.,) and Technical (vendor,
technology, sites to connect, etc.)
– Logical Model
• Technology, network graph, node location, link size, etc.
(where algorithms are used to minimize cost)
– Physical Model
• Specific hardware/software implementations
• (e.g., wiring diagram, repeater locations, etc.)
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Conceptual Model Design

Objectives
• Identify Business Objectives of the network
design project
– Through surveys/questionnaires, meetings
• What will the network be used for? Mission critical uses?
• How does the customer think the new network will
improve their business practices?
• What is the criteria to be used to judge the network
success/failure?
• Example objectives
– Provide new services/Modernize out-dated technologies
– Reduce network costs
– Make more data available to more people
– Improve network security and reliability

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 Business Goals
• What is the scope of the project?
– Greenfield or incremental design
– Network Size
• (LAN, Campus net, enterprise WAN, backbone, etc.)
• Sites to be connected, distances, etc.
– What are current/existing networks and services
– Identify applications and services to be provided from
surveys and meetings
– Quantify user behavior
– As a guideline construct a table with the following info

Type of New App?

Application Application Freq of use Criticality Comments
Sales Distributed No/hourly Very
Tracking client/server
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Application Modeling
• Need to quantify application behavior
• Can roughly classify applications into categories
– Distributed Client Server
– Cooperative Computing
– Distributed Computing
– Peer-to-Peer Model
• Classifications used to define
– application flows directions and characteristics
• Unidirection or bidirectional
• Symmetric or asymmetric
• low, medium, or high bit rate
– flow boundaries
• e.g., LAN-WAN traffic, intra- campus flow etc.

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 Application Types

• Distributed Client
Server
– Tend to be produce
asymmetric traffic –
larger in downstream
direction
– Hierarchical
organization
– Examples:
• Web applications
• Sales Tracking etc.

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Application Types

• Cooperative Computing
– Tend to be produce
asymmetric traffic –
larger in downstream
direction
– Managed correlated
distributed servers
– Variation of client server
– Examples:
• Collaborative Document
Processing
• Inventory
Control/management

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 Application Types

• Distributed
Computing
– Tend to be produce
symmetric traffic
– Managed correlated
computers
– Examples:
• Computer Aid
Manufacturing
• Computer Aided
Design

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Application Types

• Peer-to-Peer
Model
– No obvious
hierarchy or
asymmetry to
traffic
– Examples:
• ftp, telnet
• Video/audio
conferencing

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 Applications Map

• List Applications supported at

various sites and between
sites
• Example- company with
offices in Dallas and Vienna,
VA,
• Factory in Denver- consider
WAN applications only
• Appl A: Sales/inventory
control
• Appl B: CAM
• Appl C: CAD
• Appl D: video conference
• Appl E: Intranet Voice over IP

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Applications Map

• From Applications Map – get rough idea of traffic

flows between network nodes
• Get the beginnings of a traffic demand matrix
across the network
– For example – applications across the WAN table
below

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 Characterizing Application/ Network Traffic

• Traffic Characterization
– What kind of traffic is generated?
• Client-server, peer-to-peer, etc.
– How often is it generated?
– What is the relative impact on the network?
• Peak rate, mean sustained rate, min rate
• Burst size, burst duration
• Degree of multi-casting
• If possible characterize data network traffic on
existing network – two options
– Application Monitoring
• What are applications and how much bandwidth needed
– Network Monitoring
• What is network traffic pattern and bandwidth usage

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Characterizing Network Traffic

• Application Monitoring
– If incremental network design and current application
– benchmark traffic
• Software tools can be used to determine
application performance statistics
• Uses “agents” to collect data and send
information to a “management” station
• Agents run on the different OS where the
applications are installed
• Standalone software or integrated into network
management software (e.g., Openview)
• Normally, the profiling software transforms raw
application data captured from the network into
an application profile
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 Application Monitoring Software

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Application Monitoring Software

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 Application Usage Patterns

• Application Monitoring allow one to

develop Profiles of each Application
– Number of users,
– Number of sessions per user-day
– Average duration of session
– Average number of simultaneous sessions
– Peak data rate, Burst Duration
– Mean data rate, min data rate, multi-cast, etc.
• Translate Application monitor and profile
data into traffic demand matrix
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Application Assumptions
• If greenfield design or unable to benchmark
network – assume characteristics from similar
applications or other benchmark studies
• Can use data gathered from user surveys or
make overly conservative assumptions :
– number of application users = # simultaneous users
– all applications are used all the time
– each user opens just one session and the session
lasts all day
– Typical values of applications data given in textbook
• Web page with graphics - 50 Kbytes
• Spreadsheet - 100 Kbytes
• Word processing document - 200 Kbytes

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 Network Monitoring

• Identify Traffic Flows

– Establish traffic flow boundaries
• Host to server
• Floor – to – floor
• LAN to WAN
• Management traffic
• Multi-cast
• Etc.
– Capture the appropriate traffic for each flow
– Use a network capturing and analysis tool
• Sniffer, Network Management software, etc.
– Identify each flow in the capture
– Can separate flow by protocol type, destination, etc.

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Network Monitor Software

Network Monitor - [\Ethernet\NET1 Capture Window (Station Stats)]

File Capture Tools Options Window Help

% Network Utilization: Time Elapsed: 00:01:44.659

0 0 100 Network Statistics
# Frames: 35
Graph
0
Pane
Frames Per Second:
Graph Pane 0 100
# Broadcasts: 4
# Multicasts: 0
Bytes Per Second:
0 0 2180
# Bytes: 3450
# Frames Dropped: 0
Total
Total
Broadcasts Per Second : Network Status: Normal
Captured Statistics
Statistics
StatisticsPane
Pane
# Frames: 35
Network Address 1->2 1<-2 Network Address 2 # Frames in Buffer: 35
BACKUP 9 11 WFW Client # Bytes: 3450
Session
Session
BACKUP 1 *BROADCAST
# Bytes in Buffer: 3730
% Buffer Utilized: 0
Statistics
Statistics Pane
Pane
INSTRUCTOR 2 1 WFW Client # Frames Dropped: 0
INSTRUCTOR 4 4 BACKUP Per Second Statistics
WFW Client 3 *BROADCAST % Network Utilization: 0
# Frames/second: 0
# Bytes /second : 0

Network Address Frames Sent Frames Rcvd Bytes Sent Bytes Rcvd Directed Frames Sent Multicasts Sent Broadcasts Sent
*BROADCAST 0 4 0 423 0 0 0
BACKUP 14 15 1336 1513 13 0 1 Station
Station
INSTRUCTOR
WFW Client
6
15
5
11
432
1682
402
112
6
12
0
0
0
3
Statistics
StatisticsPane
Pane

Network Monitor V1.1 (built on Jun 23 1995 at 17:49:57)

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 Network Monitoring

• Method for Characterizing a Traffic Flow

– Determine statistics for traffic flows
• Individual flow, composite flow, backbone flow
– Peak data rate, burst duration, mean data
rate, mean response time, etc.
– Create source –destination traffic matrix
– May include path info in matrix

Destination 1 Destination 2 Destination 3 Destination 4

Source
LAN 3 Mbps 500 Kbps/Path 100 Kbps 50 Kbps
Segment 1 A-B-C
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Example
• Example- company with
offices in Dallas and
Vienna, VA,
• Factory in Denver
• Appl A: Sales/inventory
control
• Appl B: CAM
• Appl C: CAD
• Appl D: video
conference
• Appl E: Intranet Voice
over IP

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 Applications Map

• From Applications Map – get

rough idea of traffic flows
between network nodes
• Get the beginnings of a traffic
demand matrix across the Wide
Area Network
• If use Applications Monitoring
Approach –gather data on each
application
• A: Mean rate = .1 Mbps, Peak = .15 Mbps
• C: Mean rate = .5 Mbps, Peak = .75 Mbps
• D: Mean rate = 2 Mbps, Peak = 2.5 Mbps

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Traffic Demand Matrices

• From the application map and associated matrix and the application
monitoring data we have the mean traffic demand matrix and peak
traffic demand matrix as below
• Note, if the network monitoring approach is used get traffic demand
directly.

Mean data Dallas Denver Vienna Peak data Dallas Denver Vienna
rate demands rate demands

Dallas ----------- .1Mb 2.1 Mb Dallas ----------- .15Mb 2.65 Mb

Denver .3 Mb -------------- .8Mb Denver .45 Mb ------------- 1.2Mb

- --

Vienna 2.5 Mb 1.5 Mb ------------ Vienna 3.25 Mb 2.25 Mb ------------

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 Technical Requirements & Constraints

• From surveys/questionnaires, meetings etc. application

data determine technical requirements and constraints
• Technical goal is to build a network that meets user’s
requirements + some they may not know they need.
• Technical Goals
– Scalability
– Availability/reliability
– Network Performance
• Utilization, Throughput, Delay, Delay Jitter, packet loss rate,
call/connection blocking rate
• Traffic Estimation crucial
– Security
– Manageability/Interoperability
– Affordability $$
• Need to determine reasonable goal for each category
and the importance of each.

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Scalability

• Scalability
– how much growth a network design can support – can
the design adapt to changing network load and QoS
requirements?
– Need to examine the network needs out a few years
• Key points to understand
– How many more sites will be added?
– How extensive will networks be at each site?
– How many more users will be added?
– How many more servers, etc will be added?
– How many and what applications will be added?
– Technology migration path?

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 Scalability

• Scalability
– For logical network design – how much additional
traffic can be added – without substantial additional
investment
– For physical design - thought of as expandability and
upgrade capability
– For example,
• Given specific Router
• Can interface bit rate be upgraded
• Can number of I/O ports be increased?
• Can additional software features be added (e.g, VLAN
capability, IP Sec etc.)
– Try to set reasonable scalability goals
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Availability

• Availability is the amount of time a network is

available to users
• Can be expressed as percent uptime
– 165 hours in 168 hours/week = 98.21%
• Redundancy is used to increase a networks
availability
• Availability Goals depend on application and
user requirements – may vary with location
– Highly available voice service through out company
– traditionally telephone systems have five 9s
availability –> 99.999% =>
– downtime = .00001 x 60 x 24 x 365 = 5.25 minutes
per year!

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 Availability Goals

Availability level Downtime per year

99.999% 5.25 min
99.97% 157.68 min
99.9% 8 hours 46 min
99% 87 hours 4 min

•Work with customer to set realistic availability goals

• Telcom equipment traditionally five 9 availability
• Data equipment usually two or three 9 availability
• Remember System Availability is less than component
equipment availability

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System Availability Goals

• System availability A
estimated from
component
availability Ai
• If devices in series
N
Aseries = ∏A
i =1
i

N
A parallel = 1 − ∏ (1 − Ai )
i =1

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 Availability Goals

A = .99999 x (1 - (1-.999)(1 -.999)) x (1 – (1-.99) (1-.99))

High availability
requires increased cost $

Need increased
component availability
and redundancy via
parallel routes

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Network Performance Goals

• There are several measures to look at

– Utilization
– Throughput
– Accuracy (Packet Loss)
– Efficiency
• Protocol Frame Size, Protocol Overhead, and Routing
Protocol Overhead
– Delay and Delay Jitter
– Call Blocking for circuit switched networks
• Typically look at measures during the busy
period of the day set threshold values

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 Network Performance

• Typically have a camelback shape to network traffic

(both packet and circuit switched networks)
• Busy time period will vary with network application (e.g.
is commuting time in urban cellular networks)

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Network Performance - Utilization

• Utilization is the percent of total available

capacity (bandwidth) on a link in use (0-100%)
• Bandwidth utilization is measured over a time
interval to determine the amount in use (e.g. the
busy hour or some fraction of it)
• Link/equipment utilization identifies network
bottleneck points
– Data networks have utilization < 40 - 60%
– Telephone network utilization 80 – 90 %
• Utilization goals will effect resulting delay

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 Network Performance - Throughput
• Throughput is defined as the quantity of error-
free data successfully transferred between
nodes per unit of time (Goodput or Layer 2/3
throughput)
• Depends on network access method, the load
on the network and the error rate
• Throughput can be expressed
– in Packets per Second (PPS) than can be sent by a
device with dropping any packets for data networks or
bps
– Carried load in Erlangs for circuit switched networks
– Example IEEE 802.11 b wireless LAN – channel rate
11 Mbps – typical throughput 7 Mbps

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Network Performance -Accuracy

• Accuracy is a measure to ensure that the data

received at the destination must be the same as
the data sent by the source
• Data errors are caused by power surges, or
spikes, poor physical connections, failing devices
and electrical noise
• Accuracy can be expressed in Bit Error Rate
(BER) or packet error rate (PER)
• Target values of BER depend on physical
medium used wireless link – 1 in 104 , optical
fiber 1 in 1010
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 Network Performance -Accuracy
• Packet Loss occurs when buffers
overflow at routers or gateways
• Packet Loss results in
retransmission in applications that
require reliability
• In real-time applications
retransmission is not an option
after packet loss
• Some low level of packet loss can
be made up by human brain from
context in audio/video
• Quality drops quickly with
increasing packet loss rate
• For quality comparable to PSTN
need very low loss rate < 0.5%
• Packet Loss increase is highly
nonlinear with load increase
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Network Performance -Efficiency

• How much “overhead” is needed to send traffic across the network
• Overhead is due to several factors lets look at some of them:
– Packetization Overhead
– Network Protocol Overhead
– Routing Protocol Overheads
• Remember data is packaged in protocol frames that contain overhead
data, some have more overhead than others
– Ethernet - 38 bytes per frame
– IP - 20 bytes per frame
– TCP - 20 bytes per frame
– ATM - 5 bytes per cell
– IP RIP - every 30 seconds sends 532 byte packets
• Overhead effects delay and link sizing
• Example VoIP (IP/UDP/RTP)

IP packet
Header UDP packet
Header Header RTP packet
20 Bytes
8 Bytes 12 Bytes Data payload
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 Network Performance - Delay
• Interactive applications demand minimal delay
when receiving a data stream
• Delay must be constant for real-time
applications like voice and video applications
other wise you will get jitter causing disruptions
in voice quality and jumpiness in video streams
• Delay Jitter is the variability in the delay from a
constant
• Delay caused by network devices that move the
data within a network (e.g., router)
• For example consider Voice over IP

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IP Telephony Delays

•Consider VoIP only network (no gateways or PSTN)

•Major Delays in IP Telephony Systems
•Coding
•Packetization/Serialization
•Queueing at Routers
•Propagation
•Dejitter
•Decoding
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 IP Telephony Delays
• Coding Delay
• Time to gather speech sample compute vocoder
model values for transmission
• Value depends on vocoder utilized (0-50ms)
• Packetization and Serialization
• Packetization: Time to gather data from coder for
packet payload, attach headers
• Remember the protocol stack for VoIP
Output of Vocoder packed in Real Time Protocol (RTP) packets
Which are payload for User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets
Which are payload for Internet Protocol packets (IP)

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Packetization Delay

• VoIP packet (RTP/UDP/IP)

total header = 40 Bytes

IP packet
Header UDP packet
Header
20 Bytes Header RTP packet
8 Bytes Data payload
12 Bytes

• Assume
– Delay: N voice samples → T ms -> payload P
– Payload efficiency: P/(P+Header) %
– Net data rate: (P+Header)/T = R Kbps

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 Packetization and Delay

Data stream Accumulation

(Compressed) Buffer delay

IP packet
Header UDP packet
Header
20 Bytes Header RTP packet
8 Bytes Data payload
12 Bytes
• For example: 10Byte payload from 4-to-1 compression
rate vocoder
– Delay: 10Byte → 40 samples → 40×125μs = 5ms
– Packet efficiency: 10/(40+10) = 20%
– Net data rate: 50B/5ms = 80 Kbps (>64 kbps DSO!)

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Serialization and Transmission

• Serialization Delay: time to transmit on access line
both from caller to network also have this at the other
end of network to called party
– 1 byte on 64kbps line => 125 μsec
– G.723a VoIP codec over modem: 64byte packet
/56kbps=11ms
– 1byte on OC-3 optical fiber to home line (155Mbps) => 0.05
μsec
– Insignificant on high-speed links
• Propagation Delay
– Time to propagate packet down link - depends on distance of
link and medium
• Satellite Hop wireless link 250 ms
• Coast to Coast in North America fiber optic propagation 24 ms
• For example fiber optic cable propagates at roughly 2/3 speed of
light (3 x 108 ) meter/sec - so 200km link has propagation delay of
200/(3 x 108 ) = 0.66 ms
– Small enough on short fiber links to ignore
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 Network Delays
• Router delay
– Time for router to process/transmit packet + delay in router
queues
– Time to process/transmit packet depends on router switch
speed and link speed – for high bandwidth links and core
network routers small amount of time 10 – 20 μsecs

Queueing Delay 25

–Time waiting in router buffers for 20

processing and transmission
–Value highly dependent on load and 15

QoS mechanisms deployed in router

10’s msec to 10’s secs 10

•Queueing Delay nonlinear with 5

increases of network load
0
1

9
0

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.
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Network Delays
• Delay Jitter defined as the variation of the delay for two
consecutive packets
• Due to variation of
– Routes of packets
– Router delay (processing time + queueing time)

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 Network Delays
• Jitter buffer
– Jitter buffer to smooth out playout of packets to destination
• Allows packet delivery times to vary
• Allows packets to arrive out of order
– Note 30 ms holds one G.723 packet, typical values 30-100 msec

Receive Buffer

CODEC
Jitter eliminated if
buffer is sufficiently large

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Example of End-to-End Delay Budget

• Often design on basis of a Target Delay Budget
• Sender
– Coding Delay 5
– Packetization delay 30
– Serialization delay 11
• Network If no congestion.
– Routers 5 @ 7ms each 35
– Propagation 25
• Receiver
– Jitter buffer 30
– Serialization, de-packet, decode 46
• Total 182 ms
• Well below 400ms but above VoIP ideal of 150ms

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 Network Performance - Response Time

• Response time is a network performance goal

that users care about most
• Users recognize the amount of time to receive a
response from the network system
• Users begin to get frustrated when response
time is 100ms (.1 seconds) or greater

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Call Blocking /Traffic Engineering

• In circuit switched networks – the main performance
metric is call blocking
• Traffic Engineering or Trunking is term for determining
the call blocking and capacity allocation
• Required grade of service?
– Usually 1% blocking probability during busy hour
– Busy hour may be (1) busy hour at busiest switch (2) system
busy hour (3) system average over all hours
• Estimated traffic distribution?
– Traffic intensity is measured in Erlangs (mathematician AK
Erlang)
– One Erlang = completely occupied channel,
• For example, a standard DS0 64Kbps telephone channel
occupied for 30 min. per hour carries 0.5 erlangs

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 Traffic Engineering

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Traffic Engineering

• Traffic intensity per user Au = average call

request rate λ x average holding time H
• Total traffic intensity = traffic intensity x
number of users = Au x nu
• Given T traffic channels - what is GoS or
how many users can be supported for a
specific GoS?
• Basic analysis same for all circuit switched
telephony (wired or wireless),
– Erlang B model

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 Erlang B Model M/M/C/C queue

• C identical servers process customers in parallel.

• Customers arrive according to a Poisson process
• Customer service times exponentially distributed
• The system has a finite capacity of size C, customers arriving
when all servers busy are dropped
• Blocked calls cleared model (BCC)
• Analyze using Markov Process of n(t) – number of customers
in the system at time t
μ

λe = λ (1 − Pb )
λ λe

λ Pb
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Erlang B Charts

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 Traffic Engineering Erlang B Table

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Traffic Engineering Erlang B table

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 Security

• Security design is becoming one of the

most important aspects of network design
• Network design must ensure against loss
of business data or disruption of business
activity
• Need to understand the risk of data loss
• Security Concepts
– COMMSEC: security at communications level
– INFOSEC: security at information level
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Security Threats

• System Intrusion
– Improper access to network and hosts resources
• Denial of service
– Disable network and hosts
• Snooping
• Spoofing
• Data manipulation
• Physical damage
• Information Assurance – info security + info
availability

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 Security Impact on Network

• Security Mechanisms must be put in place

to provide security
– Physical Security Measures
• Servers/cabling in locked rooms
• Backup power and storage, etc
• Impacts physical design
– Electronic Security Measures
• Authentication, packet filters, encryption
• Firewalls
– Impacts network performance => > capacity
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Manageability

• There are different ways to manage a network

and the different things to manage
– Performance, security, fault, configuration,
accounting, etc.
• Management architecture needs to be
deterimined
– In-band versus out-of-band monitoring/signaling
– Centralized vs. distributed monitoring
– Estimate additional traffic due to management flows
• Also need to consider interoperability with
existing infrastructure and management

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 Affordability

• Affordability is sometimes called cost-

effectiveness
• Want to carry the maximum amount of
traffic for a given financial cost
• Financial costs include non-recurring
equipment costs and recurring network
operating costs
• Campus, Metro and WAN costs are areas
where a good design can save $
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Ranking

• Useful to have users/management rank

performance goals
– Low delay more important than availability
– Ease of management more important than security
– Comparative ranking or absolute
– One approach is assume 100 point to be distributed
among the categories of interest and users must
allocate the points among the performance categories
• (scalability, availability,delay, security, etc.)
• Provides Guidance to optimizing network design

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