Large Cisco Network Re-design for mobile Services Provider in Ireland

ProNetExpert was asked to redesign the network of a large service provider in Ireland (mobile). The company in question, which had begun operating some time ago ago, started out with a very small network, which grew over time as the business developed (3rd largest mobile phone provider in Ireland at that time). However, the network originally established had not been designed to ever be that size. Devices were simply added here and there, resulting in a very demanding unreliable network which caused great difficulties each time a new service was deployed.

ProNetExpert used the Cisco PPDIOO approach to redesign the network. Due to the recent success the customer had enjoyed, the budget wasn’t a problem, and ProNetExpert were able to employ a range of technologies, including the following:

>> MPLS in the campus (virtualization was hugely important)
>> Traffic Engineering and AToM
>> IS-IS as routing protocol (due to the existing knowledge of the staff)
>> Cat 7600 routers with 10Gbit Ethernet connectivity (plan for running mobile “3G” traffic over this network)
>> MARS ( Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis and Response System)
>> Network Admission Control – NAC (Cisco Clean Access Solution)
>> Cisco GUARD
>> IPS modules (Intrusion Prevention System)
>> ASA5500 series Firewalls
>> ACE modules (Application Control Engine) - > 15 modules
>> WAAS (Wide Area File Services)
>> and much more

The project lasted more than 6 months and the main difficulties experienced were in understanding the business requirements of the different departments and the services delivered. Also, the network had to be designed with future growth in mind (10Gbit and more), high availability (99.999% - 5 nines – as a minimum and guaranteed by the design) - and fast failover (any kind of redundancy need to be in place in less than 50ms – which required routing protocol tuning).