Designing Effective and Segregated Networks for Communication: A Guide

Best Practices for Network Design in Production, Development, and Test Environments

Question

A company requests that you consult with them regarding the design of their production, development, and test environments.

They indicate that the environments must communicate effectively, but they must be kept separate due to the inherent failures on the development network.

What will be configured on the links between the networks to support their design requirements?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

B.

In this scenario, the company needs to design separate networks for production, development, and test environments that can communicate with each other effectively while keeping the environments separate. Additionally, the development network has inherent failures that must be taken into account in the design.

To support these design requirements, it's important to choose a routing protocol that can provide the necessary functionality. In this case, static routes alone may not be sufficient, as they would require manual configuration of all the routes between the networks. This would be difficult to maintain and update over time, especially as the network grows.

Instead, a dynamic routing protocol would be more appropriate, as it can automatically discover and adapt to changes in the network topology. The question presents three possible routing protocols to consider: IBGP, EBGP, and OSPF.

IBGP (Interior Border Gateway Protocol) is a protocol used for communication between routers within the same autonomous system (AS). It's primarily used for exchanging routing information between routers within a single data center or campus network, and it's not well-suited for connecting separate networks. Therefore, IBGP is unlikely to be the best choice for this scenario.

EBGP (Exterior Border Gateway Protocol) is a protocol used for communication between routers in different autonomous systems. It's primarily used for connecting separate networks across the Internet, and it's not well-suited for connecting networks within a single organization or data center. Therefore, EBGP is unlikely to be the best choice for this scenario.

OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) is a dynamic routing protocol that's commonly used in enterprise networks. It's designed to support multiple areas within a single autonomous system, and it provides fast convergence and support for unequal-cost load balancing. OSPF can also be configured to support multiple virtual networks, which would be useful in this scenario for keeping the production, development, and test environments separate while still allowing them to communicate with each other.

Therefore, the best choice for this scenario is likely to be OSPF. By using OSPF, the company can configure separate virtual networks for the production, development, and test environments, while still allowing them to communicate with each other through the use of OSPF virtual links. Additionally, OSPF provides fast convergence and support for unequal-cost load balancing, which can help ensure that traffic is routed efficiently even in the event of failures on the development network.