Network Design: Best Practices for Alberta School Jurisdictions.

This report examines subsections of the computer network topology that relate to end-to-end performance and capacity planning in schools. Active star topology, Category 5 wiring, Ethernet, and intelligent devices are assumed. The report describes a model that can be used to project WAN (wide area network) connection speeds based on user traffic, describes end-to-end performance issues, characterizes and identifies tools for online analysis, describes how network traffic has an impact on network design as well as computer architectures, provides basic metrics where available, and identifies industry trends. The introduction discusses end-to-end performance, WAN connection, and bandwidth model. A WAN analysis is then presented, describing: tools; packet size; performance monitor; WAN traffic; WAN equity; shared bandwidth; cache server; multiple WAN connections; subnets and filters; case analysis; pornography, hackers, and other problems; and diagrams and documentation. A section on layers and computer performance covers the central processing unit, memory, network interface card, greening, hard disk subsystem, graphics subsystem, and motherboards. A glossary of terms is provided. Links to relevant World Wide Web sites, the structure of the Alberta Education home page, and a list of related Alberta Education resources are appended. Also appended are several configuration diagrams and illustrations of displays. (AEF)