Building a Basic Network

This initiative is close to my heart, “my baby” for the lack of a better term lol. It is something I have always been passionate about; the love of networking.  My passion for the networking and telecommunications field came from my mentor, Sheldon Paul. He taught me the concepts behind everything that I know, so this is my chance to give back. The purpose of this initiative is to educate our new and existing customers or even budding techies in Building the Basic Network Setup.  The concepts or design choices used in this segment are by no means the only way to build a network. There are a million different theories and concepts behind engineering a solution; we will focus on some of them. Configurations may vary depending on the brand or model of the device but the core concept behind how it works will stay the same.

We will start with a high-level network diagram; this will depict all the physical devices to be used in the lab exercises. As a telecommunications company, we pride ourselves in knowing the products we propose to customers. As such, the equipment that you will see in the exercises will be from our labs. This will include, but not limited to, Juniper EX series Switches and SRX Firewalls, FortiGate Firewalls and a series of Ruckus Wireless Controllers and Access Points.

We have a lot of content in the pipeline, but I will start with the basics and develop each section as we progress. As each piece of the puzzle comes together, relevant testing will be done to ensure that we have a fully functional network at the end. This is very important so that at the end of the exercise if we encounter issues, we will have an idea of where we need to start troubleshooting. A checklist can also be created for testing as we progress so that as each item is tested it can be checked off. For example, testing Inter-VLAN Routing, this has to be tested before moving on so that we know when users are connected to the network, they can access the same resources, etc.

I will touch on configuring the various management options for each device, VLAN creation, assignment of VLANs to various ports, trunk port creation and when / why we need to use them. We would also look at some basic routing, inter-VLAN routing, and static routing as well as IP address distribution or DHCP as we call it and wireless technologies.

Like I said before, there is no one way to build a network. There will always be a different approach that can be taken depending on customers’ requirements. I really hope that I can teach or inspire at least a single person to get into a device and try it yourself or just try to configure it while I do. I look forward to your engagement and I am always open to suggestions or questions, I can be reached at 1-868-223-1576, priya.boodram@blunetworks-tt.com.  The first video in this segment will be posted to our Social Media platforms on January 8^th 2020.   Let’s build it together!