A structured approach for developing a campus-wide network

Developing a campus wide network that addresses the needs of a relatively disjoint population as well as the needs of small individual groups requires planning and research. A technique based on the software engineering paradigm can be applied to the network planning and implementation. Network planning starts with the development of specifications which describes the users' needs. From this information a phase development of the network design and implementation is created along with a series of criteria to evaluate each phase. This paper addresses the planning and implementation of a campus wide network in a small university with limited networking experience.

Developing an understanding of the users' needs requires an understanding of the user. In most school settings the population can be divided into five groups: students, faculty, administration, non-technical staff, and computer service staff. Each of these groups have specific computing requirements that must be addressed by the network, and this requires an analysis of the computing needs prior to the establishment of the network services.

A profile of each users group is developed. The information included in a profiles is determined by the environment that network will service. The profile ascertains by group the type of resources needed, the level of security needed, the overall size of the population, and the number of highly active users, moderately active users, and minimally active users. In some instances the investigation requires the consideration of other factors in forming the profile. For example in the faculty and student populations such things as major and department need to be considered. Much of the information contained is dependent upon the groups current level of computing, the profile can not stop at this point but must try to include the types of resources and activities a group will use given the ease of access via the network. A very important point to remember is the network will put resources at people's finger tips that prior to this time were inaccessible. Departments that have never used the main frame may now be interested in taking advantage of the network access. Finally the profiles need to include the hardware resources that currently exist. It is unreasonable to think that all the equipment will be replaced to produce a nice homogenous network.