Design Scenario

You are in the process of developing a network design proposal for Genome4U, a large-scale

university project that has been discussed in previous chapters. As you considered network

management for this project, you came to a preliminary decision that CDP should be enabled on the

Cisco routers and switches. When you discussed this idea with the university network engineers,

however, you suddenly found yourself in the middle of a Layer 8 (office politics) quagmire. As it

turns out, the network engineers have been arguing among themselves for years about the benefits of

CDP. The security-focused engineers want it disabled. The engineers who focus on day-to-day

operations want it enabled. The desktop support technicians agree with the operations group because

the Cisco VoIP phones that they install can take advantage of CDP. The IT architects insist that the

decision is theirs but they don’t return phone calls when you ask for their opinion.

What will be your recommendation and why? Should CDP be enabled? Should it be enabled on all

devices and interfaces? How will you convince your customers that your decision is the best one and

they should abide by it, even the IT architects?

Review Questions

1. This chapter covered network management, whereas the previous chapter covered network

security. Note that network design tasks are often interwoven, however, and shouldn’t be

considered discrete just because a book is divided into discrete chapters. In what ways are

network management and network security interrelated? When designing network management

for your customer, what security concerns will you address? When designing network security

for your customer, what network management concerns will you address?

2. Research a network management product or tool of your choice. Describe the product or tool in

two or three paragraphs.

Subject: ICT319 Network Design Project Oppenheimer, P. 2010, Top-Down Network Design, CISCO Press

Chapter 9 Network Management Design

Design Scenario