Designing ISP Architectures
Authors: John V. Nguyen
Venue:  (2002)

From the Book:PrefaceThis book is one of an on-going series of books collectively known as the Sun BluePrints program. This BluePrint is a resource for designing an Internet Service Provider (ISP) architecture.About This BookIn this BluePrint, you'll find practical advice and information helpful in making key decisions for designing platform-independent ISP architectures. Based upon industry standards, expert knowledge, and hands-on experience, this book: Details the design process Introduces fundamental design principles References sources for advanced design principles Shares tips, insights, and preferred practices for considering requirements, technology, and trade-offs Describes how to avoid common pitfalls Offers a low-cost approach for entering the ISP market and provides sources for obtaining market data Suggests criteria for selecting components, based on varying design scenarios Provides general guidelines for capacity planning Applies the material to a sample customer scenario, where applicable Includes appendices containing a prototype for small to medium-sized environments that we successfully implemented in the lab at Sun Microsystems in San DiegoSun BluePrints ProgramThe mission of the Sun BluePrints program is to empower Sun's customers with the technical knowledge required to implement reliable, extensible, and secure information systems within the datacenter using Sun products. This program provides a framework to identify, develop, and distribute best practices information that applies across Sun product linsubjects in various areas contribute to the program and focus on the scope and usefulness of the information.The Sun BluePrints program includes books, guides, and online articles. Through these vehicles, Sun can provide guidance, installation and implementation experiences, real-life scenarios, and late-breaking technical information. The monthly electronic magazine, Sun BluePrints OnLine, is located on the Web at http://www.sun.com/blueprints. To be notified about updates to the Sun BluePrints program, please register at this site.Who Should Read This BookThis book is expressly for IT architects and consultants who design ISP architectures. Portions of this book are beneficial to systems engineers, system administrators, security administrators, application designers, and network administrators who implement solutions. For this secondary audience, this book provides design fundamentals, configuration considerations and examples, and tips and resources for implementing a design.Note - Operation and management issues are beyond the scope of this book.Before You Read This BookTo provide the best focus for the subject of this book, we assume readers have experience in systems engineering, system administration, and network administration, and that now they are focused on designing solutions for ISP customers. This audience understands ISP services, components, infrastructure, networking, and related technologies.Introducing FijiNetThroughout this book, we use a fictitious company called FijiNet to demonstrate how to design an ISP architecture. Our goal is to apply the concepts and information to a realistic scenario while making the content enjoyable to read. Any resemblance to a past, present, or future company named FijiNet is purely coincidental.Note - Use this book to design an ISP architecture for any size ISP. In our design and examples for FijiNet, we purposely limit the scope to an initial 10,000 subscribers, so that we can effectively cover subjects.How This Book Is OrganizedChapter 1 "Introduction," introduces the ISP subject matter and briefly describes the market, value, challenges, and approach to solutions.Chapter 2 "Formulating Design Requirements," introduces a systematic approach to obtaining and evaluating business and functional requirements for a new ISP architecture. Before you start designing an architecture, use this chapter to organize and derive the information you need to develop a design that meets requirements, takes into account unknowns (assumptions), and bases decisions on realistic data.Chapter 3 "Establishing an Architectural Model," provides an architectural model and principles to use in designing an ISP architecture. Building upon the approach in Chapter 2, this chapter shows you how to apply an architectural model and principles to design requirements.Chapter 4 "Creating a Logical Design," recommends engineering a logical design based on high-level topology of the architecture. It describes elements necessary for creating a logical design, and it presents these elements in a high-level structure, showing how to design an architecture from the top-level down.Chapter 5 "Creating a Physical Design," builds on the previous chapter by using the logical design to construct a high-level network design and perform capacity planning. This chapter provides information to assist you in formulating estimates for how much capacity your design needs. Use it as a general sizing guideline for estimating storage and memory for services.Chapter 6 "Selecting Components," provides general guidelines for selecting software, server, and network components for an architecture design. As part of this chapter, we provide tables listing commonly used commercial and Open Source products appropriate for ISP infrastructures. Think of this chapter as a shopping list for physical components needed to implement the design arrived at in earlier chapters.Chapter 7 "Implementing a Solution," offers general practices and recommendations for implementing a design. Includes recommendations for developing a prototype prior to implementing a solution. Also in this chapter are considerations for adapting to change after an ISP has implemented a solution.Note - Most of the following appendixes contain details of an implementation for FijiNet, the prototype that was built and tested in the Sun lab in San Diego. Although numerous details would obviously change with another implementation, based both on design decisions and changes in versions of base software, these appendices serve as a useful reference for the reader who wants to see an implementation.Appendix A, "Questions for Obtaining Design Requirements," provides interview questions to use when you are obtaining and refining requirements for an architecture.Appendix B, "Sample Network Configurations," contains sample configurations for routers, switches, network access servers, and domain name servers.Appendix C, "Sample DNS Configurations," provides sample configurations for your domain name service (DNS) servers.Appendix D, "DHCP Server Configuration," contains a sample configuration for the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) server.Appendix E, "NTP Server Configuration," provides a sample configuration for the network time protocol (NTP) server.Appendix F, "LDAP Configuration," contains a sample configuration for the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP).Appendix F, "DNS Benchmark Data for Sun Enterprise Servers," contains benchmark results from the Sun DNS/BIND Benchmarking and Sizing Guide, dated March 2, 2001. We use this data for making assumptions about performance.Appendix G, "Network Capacity," contains specifications for network capacity.Appendix H, "HTTP Throughput," provides a table for HTTP throughput for network capacity.Appendix I, "Port and Protocol List," provides a partial list of protocols and ports helpful in identifying services and associated protocols/ports for firewall rules.Ordering Sun DocumentationThe SunDocs SM program provides more than 250 manuals from Sun Microsystems, Inc. If you live in the United States, Canada, Europe, or Japan, you can purchase documentation sets or individual manuals through this program. Fatbrain.com, an Internet professional bookstore, stocks select product documentation from Sun Microsystems, Inc. For a list of documents and how to order them, visit the Sun Documentation Center on Fatbrain.com at: http://www1.fatbrain.com/documentation/sunAccessing Sun Documentation OnlineThe docs.sun.com web site enables you to access Sun technical documentation on the Web. You can browse the docs.sun.com archive or search for a specific book title or subject at:http://docs.sun.comhttp://www.sun.com/blueprintsRecommended PublicationsIn addition to other sources we cite in this book, we recommend the following publications: Dot-Com Beyond - Breakthrough Internet-Based Architectures and Methodologies Sun Performance Tuning, 2nd Edition Capacity Planning for Internet Services Solaris and LDAP Naming ServicesUsing UNIX CommandsThis document does not contain information on basic UNIX(r) commands and procedures such as shutting down a system, booting a system, and configuring devices. See one or more of the following for this information: AnswerBook2 online documentation for the Solaris Operating Environment Other software documentation that you received with your systemSun Welcomes Your CommentsWe are interested in improving our documentation and welcome your comments and suggestions. You can email your comments to us at: docfeedback@sun.com or blueprints@sun.comPlease include the part number (806-0917-10) or title of this document in the subject line of your email. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player