If you ever need some help in designing a network, wondering what’s the best practices for security or wireless, then Cisco has some very helpful information for you! Over the years, Cisco has put together a bunch of official network designs that you can review and use to assist with your own network design challenges. Cisco calls them CVD’s…or, Cisco Validated Designs. When they first started out, the designs were very technical and written in a bit of a bland manner (written by CCIE’s no doubt). Now, however, they are very colorful, lots of visuals and slick copy art, but…they are still technical and very helpful!!  (I would imagine they are still written by a bunch of CCIE’s, but then filtered through a design/publishing group of some sort.)

Take a look at this link:  Cisco Validated Designs

I’m in the process of reviewing and upgrading my core VTI/DMVPN infrastructure, and I’m reading through the CVD “Intelligent WAN Technology Design Guide”….

Cover page for the CVD iWAN guide

This design guide is NOT light reading…it’s 287 pages of very technical information and sample configurations…VERY cool. It’s going to take me several days to digest this thing…but already it has answered several questions that I’ve been wondering about.

When you’re viewing the CVD webpage, scroll down near the bottom to the “Design guides by category”…as you can see, there are a ton of options which should cover just about anything you are interested in.

Enjoy!!