Cisco Network Design Solutions for Small-Medium Businesses

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and Has Depth to Solve Design Issues
Review: Cisco Network Design Solutions for Small-Medium Businesses (Peter Rybacyk, 2005) outlines the networking needs of SMB's across the whole "yellow pages" of vertical markets. When dealing with a topic this extensive, an author has to make choices between depth and breadth. While the book does not delve too deeply into configuration or deployment use cases, it does manage to touch on pretty much every solution Cisco offers the SMB market. It's a comprehensive resource for a partner or reseller to help design an SMB network. By covering the SMB market in such detail, the book actually winds up touching on most of the major solutions (including enterprise) in networking today.

For the small business owner, its probably a bit steep on the technical detail for a first-step resource, but if you are already networking savvy or have able to dig a little deeper to get more vital information, you'll find this book quite useful. It's worth noting that there isn't any mention of the Linksys offerings; thus, it appears that this book is aimed at the "larger than the smallest" SMB market; it certainly is not applicable to small office/home office (SOHO).

Throughout the book the author puts forth a poignant and true-ringing analogy about the direction of networking vis a vis its apparent commoditization. Networking appears to be en route, however quickly and completely, to a kind of utility basis, wherein we will come to see it as increasingly plug and play, and perhaps as reliable, as electrical and plumbing systems. Although it is questionable whether networking can ever attain such a status, especially inasmuch as the applications get more complex with IPT, wireless, and storage, the trend in that direction is apparent (and welcome!).

The first part of the book covers the network design process and the profiles on different small and medium-sized businesses. It takes into consideration the key requirements of an SMB network: high performance, scalability, and "built within budget." This section includes an interesting overview of the networking infrastructure, including cable plant and storage requirements. There is a very useful checklist of design document components including requirements, cost/benefit analysis, implementation details, and so forth.

The second, and larger, part of the book details specific network solutions. These include security, remote access, IP telephony, wireless, partner collaboration, customer care, and front/back office collaboration. The security topic is divided into two chapters, the first dealing with the impact of the wide variety of security breaches (such as DDoS, man-in-the-middle attacks, zombies, worms, etc.). The other security chapter covers details on VPNs (in terms of the encryption technologies, appliances such as concentrators to manage them, and management advantages), firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and security functionality in the Cisco IOS. After detailing the requirements for VPNs (authentication, encryption, flexibility, scalability), a variety of VPN topologies (hub and spoke versus full mesh) and technologies (IPSec, SSL, and GRE) are discussed. It then covers advanced topics such as Dynamic Multipoint VPNs (DMVPN). Firewall technologies and capabilities such as DMZ creation, NAT, static packet filtering, and stateful inspection are discussed in detail.

Wireless LANs (WLAN) are tackled next, and the book provides excellent product descriptions of access points, wireless routers and bridges, switching requirements, site survey issues, the different standards, and the security implementation. There are several unique security issues related to wireless networking; examples include rogue access points and eavesdropping. There are many authentication and encryption technologies available for WLANs, partly because this a new area and partly because the original WEP encryption proved to be fairly easy to hack. The performance and topology considerations of WLANs also get a little bit dense because of the many ways that wireless signals can be interrupted. Thus, a serious discussion on WLAN technology needs to cover such topics as radio frequencies, relevant standards (802.11 a/b/g), transmit power, and antenna types. The Cisco Aironet family of access points is discussed in detail.

The CRM chapter deals with the relevant Cisco products (e.g., IPCC) to customer care. This is a relatively nebulous area because it is really so business dependent that it's hard to find a one-size-fits-all solution. But the Cisco Contact Center product description gives a very good idea of the current state of the solution.

The IP Telephony chapter covers the Cisco Call Manager (CCM) Express and other CCM IPT solutions, including deployment options. It first discusses the lower-level technical details such as echo, delay and jitter, and then goes on to discuss IPT standards and protocols, and relevant products such as gateways, gatekeepers, PBXs, and IP phones. Then integrated IPT solutions are discussed along with integrated call manager deployments. Finally it covers integration issues such as dial plans and integration with legacy PBXes. Issues related to unified messaging (e.g., getting your voice messages via email, and vice versa) are discussed in the following chapter, followed by front office/back office integration (detailing applications such as order processing and inventory management).

Overall, this well written and smartly illustrated book hits the mark and rates 5 stars out of 5.

Rating:
Summary: Design Solutions for SMB is an Outstanding Book
Review: Do you manage an accounting department? This book is for you. Are you in sales, marketing, manufacturing, advertising? This book is for you. Are you a senior or mid-level manager in a small to medium sized business? If you are, this book is for you. If you are a network engineer who is considering a move into management this book is for you. If you are a network manager, this book will give you excellent insights into the use of various technologies in your business. If you are a school administrator or technology coordinator in a school district of any size this book is for you. If you are a Cisco 'guru', this book will fill in any gap that you may have regarding newer Cisco technologies and how they might be integrated within your organization.

This book isn't a standard technology book with detailed explanations regarding for instance; how to enter into 'config' mode or how to configure a vlan on a wireless device. This book is about serious issues that all Small to Medium businesses face as they try to bring their organizations to the next level.

It is almost impossible to do justice to this book without writing 100 page review...but I will do my best to point out some salient points that I believe provide the philosophical guidance that underlies what is written.

In Chapter 7 Customer Relationship Management Solutions (CRM), Peter writes the following, "Any effective CRM solutions offers an SMB the opportunity to provide excellent customer service 100% of the time or, at least, close to it. In the information age, it means that no matter which employee is interacting with a customer, he or she has access to the relevant information to meet the customer's needs effectively, in a timely manner, and without confusion." He then proceeds to write that whether one is taking an order, a reservation, offering info about a new service or product, "a CRM solution should facilitate the interaction and the decision-making process on the part of the SMB's employees."

Talk about a crash-course MBA. His chapter on CRM and Chapter 10 Front and Back Office Integration Solutions reads like a mini-mba and should be helpful to anyone in management. The rest of the book provides inciteful information on various technologies and how they can be considered within the context of Customer Relationship Management Solution, increasing a company's competitiveness and increasing the bottom line.

For instance, in the section on VPNs, Peter provides a level of technical insight that is usually missing from technical how-to books. In addition, he provides the business-management insight that is always missing from how-to books. The issues that he writes about are critically important for not only network managers to understand, but for business managers to understand also. Any techie who reads this book will clearly be more valuable to an organization. Many techies only understand the 'prompt' they see on a router or switch. If a 'techie' wants to be well-respected within an organization, they need to have a deeper level of managerial insight that goes beyond the 'prompt'. This book will provide that and may well lead to a higher-level position within a company.

For instance, a VPN isn't just encrypted traffic running through the Internet. In the VPN section, Peter writes about design considerations, network topoligies and workforce distribution, cost savings, and vpns as enhancements to the existing communications infrastructure, reliability, resiliance, and scalability, and much, much more.

I consider myself fairly knowledgable on routing, wireless, security...vpns, firewalls, (not intrusion detection). I know a fair amount about VoIP in WANs. This book provided me with a great deal of understanding as to the equipment and issues with using VoIP in lans. I knew next to nothing about Unified Communications Solutions but now understand how it fits overall within the organization, and understand critical issues from both the technical and the human-managerial side. I have gained many important insights into areas that I understand technically...but not from the smb-management side.

Peter writes in such a manner that it is easy to understand where and how the technologies that he writes about, will help small to medium business processes and provide a higher lever of Customer Relationship Management.

This was a challenging book to write, but Peter has succeeded in doing the impossible. He has successfully integrated both technical and managerial issues into a cohesive book that any business and even school district will benefit from.

This book is a winner! Read it today!






Rating:
Summary: Concentrated guidance for SMBs!!
Review: Every sentence in this excellently written book is packed with concentrated advice for small-to-medium sized enterprises. The content is absolutely up-to-date in how it relates to the real world. I particularly valued the Security Overview chapter, which helped me, with its Security Policy template, to meet the new Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for financial data security. Essential reading for every SMB enterprise!

Rating:
Summary: Business First Approach Spells Winner
Review: This book gives sound advice for developing an effective business focused network solution. I especially like the chapters on security, which are practical and concise, offering an effective path for making sense of the all to complex security situation that we find ourselves confronted with in these times. The author puts security issues and threats in an easy-to-understand framework along with examples that help the reader make the connection to their business. Each threat is followed up with a set of solutions that the designer (and the CEO) can use to assess the security interventions that best balance risks and costs for their own business. The creation of a security policy is stressed. A follow-on chapter delves into the details of how the security policy gets translated into the Cisco environment. This book takes the rare but much needed view that network design should be driven from requirements and policy first and design and implementation second. Although the title slots the book in the realm of Cisco network design for small to medium businesses it should be of interest to a wider audience. I count myself fortunate to have crossed paths with this practical and useful book. Hats off to Mr. Rybaczyk for a job well done!