Preface
This 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 Book
In 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 Diego
Sun BluePrints Program
The 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 lines. Experts in technical
subjects 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 Book
This 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 Book
To 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 FijiNet
Throughout 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 Organized
Chapter 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: "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 identity services and associated protocals/ports
for firtewall rules.
Accessing Sun Documentation Online
The 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:
Recommended Publications
In addition to other sources we cite in this book, we recommend the following
publications:
Using UNIX[R] Commands
This document does not contain information on basic UNIX 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[tm] online documentation for the Solaris Operating Environment
- Other software documentation that you received with your system
Sun Welcomes Your Comments
We 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.com
