Welcome to my technology blog. My name is Kat, and I have been an avid fan of technology for years. In my professional life, I am a restaurant owner, but I have dabbled in everything tech-related from building computers to online marketing to basic programming. In this space, I want to focus on brilliant innovations in technology. When I am not at the restaurant with my husband, you can find me curled up with my kids watching videos on their tablets, checking out new video games on our favourite consoles or other tech-related entertainment. Get comfortable, and explore these posts. I hope they inspire you to learn or do new things with technology.
As a network design specialist, there are several considerations you ought to make whenever contracted for a job by a client. Several simplistic, yet very crucial factors, determine whether your client ends up satisfied with your perfectly executed, connected, and routed network or not. Every network design specialist should remember that not all clients are IT savvy individuals who will understand every component of the entire system and their exact purposes, or will dedicate a lot of time to understanding them. When designing a local area network for a small business, for instance, three particular questions will always be at the back of your clients' minds. Answering these questions as simply as possible with both the design you choose and your execution will determine whether your clients fully enjoy your design work.
How does this function?
There are many types of switches and routers. Each of these comes with an army of functions that not every other client will understand immediately. Designing a network that incorporates too many features can cause frustration to your clients in future. It is important to asses every client's needs carefully and determine the simplest of features necessary to satisfy your customer. Remember, not all clients will be backed by an army of IT staff that you can train for future network operation. And even if so, not all IT staff in different organizations will have a guaranteed capacity to adopt very complex network designs easily. At times, simple is often the best choice in a client's perspective. No client wants to end up with a complex network with an army of switches and routers that they have to keep asking the question "what does this do?"
Do I really need that?
Higher speeds are pouring in by the day, and have got network designers as excited as the man who yells "I found the way out!" While it is good to recommend to customers the newest trends and the fastest speeds, it is also good to ensure that your customer invests in only what they need. A network design specialist, who advises their client to purchase switches everywhere for the fastest speeds, while the client's current 100mbps network is only handling a ten-per-cent capacity, is probably misleading the client into a wasteful situation. The wiser thing would be to ensure that core switches support these speeds, but the client does not invest too much in switches for these speeds.
Where do I get those?
Finally, Clients often need maintenance and future replacements for various components of the network. This is why a good network designer will try to standardize on a few different parts he uses. Standardizing helps in making configuration and troubleshooting simpler. Clients can also have these devices in ready-spares for future repairs and replacements. This makes work easier and can even save money for the while eliminating the question "where do I get those?"
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