The Art of Network Architecture: Business-Driven Design

Chapter 10. Measure Twice

If there were a poll taken for the least favorite topic among network engineers, network management would surely win without much trouble. And yet...without solid management, network engineers are running blind, like a builder without a level or a tape measure. It’s not good enough to have a blueprint; you need to know how your current building stacks up against that blueprint, and what and where to change to bring things into line.

This chapter aims to minimize the pain of network management while maximizing the gain. In a perfect world, the measurements and analysis network architects need to manage a network would just “fall out” of the process of building the network. But networks are never perfect worlds, whether ...