Co-Founder Taliferro
Introduction
Network systems are critical to the success of any company. But as necessary as they are, they're often overlooked by companies that need help figuring out what they need or can't afford top-of-the-line solutions. In this post, I'll discuss how to build an efficient and secure network system, even if you spend a limited amount of money on it.
Allowing a network to disrepair can affect a company's productivity and profitability. The good news is that simple things can keep a network healthy.
Network security and performance
Include security as an essential aspect of network design from the start. security is not a one-time task but needs to be tested and monitored regularly. Update security measures regularly as threats evolve, or attackers discover new vulnerabilities.
Consider how the systems will be protected from attack or intrusion when designing a network architecture. Not only do you need to protect against external threats, but also from internal ones (such as employees who may accidentally cause damage).
Secure Network Devices
Network security is essential to protect your data and the network itself. All devices on a network should be secure. Such devices include load balancers, routers, switches, and firewalls.
Firewalls
Firewalls allow or deny traffic between networks. They can also detect malicious activity on the internal network by examining packets for signs of attack.
Firewalls control traffic to and from a network, allowing only certain types of traffic to pass through. Firewalls can also filter traffic between networks. Additionally, in many cases, firewalls can protect internal systems from attacks on the Internet by blocking these malicious communications at the firewall level.
DDoS Protection is one firewall solution that protects against Distributed Denial Of Service attacks.
VPN
Virtual Private Networks create encrypted tunnels through untrusted networks so that private information can be securely transmitted over these networks.
Intrusion Systems
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) are two types of security systems that work together to protect your network from attacks. IDS is a passive system. It detects malicious activity but does not block or prevent the attack. IPS is an active system that detects malicious activity and blocks or prevents it from occurring on the network.
IDS can detect known attacks and patterns of attack but cannot stop unknown attacks because there is no signature database to reference. IDS and IPS can track and analyze previous episodes, which helps you understand what kind of attack has occurred to plan for future prevention strategies by identifying trends in an attacker's tactics, tools, and procedures.
Data Loss Prevention tools prevent confidential information from falling into the wrong hands by monitoring all file transfers across an organization's systems and blocking unauthorized exchanges if required.
Load Balancers
Load balancers distribute network traffic across multiple systems to optimize performance and availability for various applications running on your servers (such as web servers). For example, let's say you have a website with a series of pages. Each time someone visits one of the pages, the load balancer distributes that user's request to one or more web servers—so if one server gets overloaded with requests, the other servers can pick up some of its load.
Along with distributing traffic across multiple servers, load balancers improve performance and reliability by reducing latency in response time between users accessing a site. They do this by monitoring each server's health (or "state") to ensure they're not overwhelmed by too much incoming traffic at once. When any server's state changes from healthy to unhealthy due to high loads or other factors (like power outages), the load balancer will stop sending traffic there until it returns to its original healthy state again.
Proxies
Proxies provide additional network security functionality. A proxy protects against denial-of-service attacks and filter traffic based on specific criteria. For example, a proxy server can cache content or filter traffic based on its content type.
Hardware
Choosing the proper hardware is essential for any network system. The first step is to determine the need and use. Once there is a clear idea of what the system needs to accomplish, it's time to look at the options available.
When deciding which type of hardware best fits, consider compatibility with other systems in the environment and compatibility with software stacks (such as Apache Cassandra or MongoDB) that organizations in similar industries commonly use.
For example, if an organization uses a particular database software stack and has existing infrastructure that supports it, it would be wise to choose network performance hardware that matches the technology stack. If not, integration into the current ecosystem will be complex.
In addition to looking at compatibility with other systems within your environment, ensure each component has been tested thoroughly before installing anything onto production servers - especially critical components such as iSCSI initiators or switches/routers/firewalls.
Network design
Designing a network is crucial because it involves choosing the proper hardware and software proportional to the organization's needs. This includes choosing the correct network topology, connecting devices and figuring out how to manage the network. When you have a plan in place that considers all aspects of business goals—including the user experience —you'll be able to use that information as a foundation for building the infrastructure.
Redundancy
Provide redundancy so that if one system component goes down, it does not take the whole system. The goal of redundancy is to provide an alternate path for the data to reach its destination. This occurs using multiple hardware components, software, and people.
Consider several points of failure for each component in your environment. For example, if you have a single server and a single network connection to the Internet, then your entire system has a single point of failure. If that server goes down or loses its network connection to the Internet due to a power outage or other disaster, then all applications hosted on that server will not be able to communicate with external systems until the issue is resolved. Instead, design a network infrastructure as redundant as possible.
If one part goes offline due to some error (or even malicious attack), other components are still available for communication within the organization.
Carefully consider the tradeoffs between centralized and distributed solutions. A distributed solution may cost more but provide better performance and reliability over time. This is because a distributed system has multiple pathways for data to travel, which can help it avoid problems from single points of failure (i.e., if one part of the network fails, others can still get messages through). Additionally, because data is replicated across multiple nodes in a cluster, you'll have multiple copies of your data available even if one node goes down. So there's less risk of losing information due to hardware failure or human error.
In addition to being more fault-tolerant than centralized solutions, distributed systems also tend to scale better as they grow in size.
Since each computer in a cluster runs its copy of the software and stores its copy of data sets locally, distributed systems are often much faster than comparable centralized equivalents.
Network systems are essential to keep secure, fast, and reliable, but they must also fit into the company budget.
Security Policy
A good network security policy will include mobile device management (MDM), virtual private networks (VPN), and firewalls. Companies need policies to protect the network from unauthorized access.
ISPs
To ensure that the network is running at peak efficiency, companies must test their networks periodically for speed or latency issues that can slow daily communications between employees and customers. You'll also want to monitor your Internet Service Provider's performance from time to time to determine whether they're doing their job.
For business operations to work smoothly, all devices connected via WiFi or Ethernet cables must stay connected without interruption.
Stay vigilant of poor reception within an office building or with an ISP's service quality reaches those devices in question throughout its intended range area locations like homes, offices etcetera depending on how far away they might be physically speaking.
Maintenance
Maintenance is a critical component of network systems, and there are several types that you should be aware. First, you should know that software updates can prevent your network from crashing. Hardware upgrades are another way to improve performance, while patches are meant to ensure your system is safe against outside threats.
It would be best if you also took time to plan when these maintenance procedures occur; it's essential not to do them too frequently or not often enough. It's also necessary for qualified personnel to handle these tasks; this ensures that everything goes smoothly and that no damage is done in the process.
Capacity planning considerations
- Adding new applications that require additional capacity
- Adding new employees who will use more bandwidth or CPU processing power than you expect
- Plan for downtime
- If possible, try two different vendors
Best Practices
To keep your network running smoothly, it's best practice to periodically schedule maintenance on your systems to perform routine checks and upgrades of hardware, software, and firmware components. Maintenance windows should be planned before or after peak usage hours so there are fewer customer service interruptions. It's also important to consider the impact of outages on other systems. Suppose the network goes down during a business day when employees try to access corporate applications from home offices over VPN connections. In that case, this could significantly negatively impact productivity throughout an organization.
- Keep your systems up-to-date
- Apply patches and updates as soon as they become available.
- Monitor your network for problems and ensure you have an effective strategy to log all errors or issues that occur in your networks so they can be addressed immediately.
- Back up all data regularly in case of disasters or hardware failures; having backups of all data means less downtime and fewer losses from crashes due to outdated hardware or system failure.
- Properly manage firewall rules and only allow services on specific ports that need to be accessible from the outside.
- It is recommended that firewall rules be managed by a team with knowledge of the network architecture. Rules should be reviewed regularly to ensure they are still needed and updated when changes are made.
- The rules should be documented and tested before implementation. Once implemented, the rules should be monitored for compliance with best practices.
- Make sure you have adequate redundancy. Avoid a single-point failure which would bring down critical services across the entire company.
- Have redundant power sources (such as UPS units) at every location where equipment is connected directly to the electrical grid so they won't lose power when something goes wrong elsewhere within their building complex(es).
- Removing unnecessary networking hardware and software, such as new servers, should be a priority for any network administrator. If you need to remove servers or services from your network, you can use standard operating system tools like the task manager in Windows or check the status of processes on Linux machines. If your organization has moved to cloud-based computing, it may be more challenging to determine if there are unused resources than if all of your systems were physical.
- Utilizing cloud services is one of the most cost-effective business operations. With the growth of cloud computing, it's never been easier to leverage these services to save money and time on costly hardware purchases, maintenance, and upgrades. Cloud services can be used to host websites and databases or even software applications like CRM systems or accounting packages. Cloud providers offer access to resources through pay-as-you-go pricing models that allow businesses with fluctuating needs.
The Cloud
Cloud providers also offer security features not available with on-premise solutions, such as firewalls and encryption options that protect information from hackers who may try stealing it through nefarious means like phishing scams or brute force attacks.
Start-ups or companies undergoing expansion—scale up or down according to demand without worrying about purchasing additional hardware (which often sits idle when not being used).
Monitoring and Logging
Monitoring systems help you catch issues before they occur. Logging systems, on the other hand, are what you need to track down issues after they occur. You can combine these two functions into a single system that will perform both tasks for you.
This kind of monitoring and Logging is essential because it helps you keep an eye on things like CPU usage and disk space usage (monitoring), as well as a log when a user has been accessing sensitive data (Logging). Some examples of monitoring and logging systems include:
- Nagios is an open-source network monitoring system used by companies like eBay and Boeing to monitor thousands of servers across multiple data centers. It provides real-time alerts based on thresholds set by administrators, so they know when something goes wrong with their servers before their customers start complaining about downtime or slow speeds;
- Splunk is another open-source solution that focuses more specifically on IT operations needs through its 'search' functionality which allows users to search through logs quickly using keywords rather than having to page through them manually;
Backup, Backup and Backup
It is vital to have a backup system in place in case of a catastrophic failure. If your backup system fails, you may not be able to recover any data (including backups.) Backups should be tested regularly and stored in a different location from the original data.
Backups should also be stored in a different format from the original data so that if something happens to your storage media (e.g., hard drive failure), you will keep all of your information and any backups made since then. And backups must be encrypted since they're often stored on portable media like USB sticks or external hard drives, which can easily fall into the wrong hands.
Conclusion
With these best practices, you'll be able to keep the network running smoothly and prevent it from becoming a bottleneck that slows down your business.
As we've seen in this blog post, there are many things to consider when building or maintaining a network system. It's essential to consider what your needs are today and how they might change over time. For example, if you want a solution that can scale as your company grows and changes, its needs for bandwidth and reliability might need more than traditional solutions like WiFi routers or Ethernet switches. It's also important to stay within budget because many companies are willing to help with any network problem.
Tyrone Showers