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Understanding
roles of these bits of hardware and
nature of network to be built takes you a long way in deigning
ideal computer network.
Understanding
implementation of network protocol and services design also contributes to a good computer network design. You can use other area networks besides LANs and WANs. A good knowledge about
different forms of area networks and their roles in network designing throws up better ideas for
framework.
However,
two significant elements influencing network designing are
bandwidth and latency supported by a network.
Bandwidth in computer networking means
rate at which data can travel through a network connection or interface. It is usually expressed in bytes per second (bps). Bandwidth, however, is just one element that dictates
speed of a network. Latency,
other important element of speed refers to
delays in processing different types of network data. Usually, tools such as ping and trace-route assess latency by determining
time taken by a network packet to travel from source to destination and back.
Once you have planned
budget and
various factors influencing a network design, you can think about
various template designs. You can think of a symmetric computer network, where all devices can transmit and receive data at equal rates, or an asymmetric one which can supports different proportion of data or bandwidth in different direction.

Adrian Griffiths, write article and provide consultancy to Viper Systems