Analyze the following design scenario by answering the questions listed below, a
ID: 3572782 • Letter: A
Question
Analyze the following design scenario by answering the questions listed below, and submit your response here. Keep in mind you will also be asked to communicate your recommendations for the Genome4U network to groups of employees who do not agree. You will be summarizing the situation, including your recommendations and questions for them, in the next activity Communicate the Design Scenario to Employees.
You are in the process of developing a network design proposal for Genome4U, a large-scale university project that has been discussed in previous weeks. As you considered network management for this project, you came to a preliminary decision that Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) should be enabled on the Cisco routers and switches.
When you discussed this idea with the university network engineers, however, you suddenly found yourself in the middle of an office politics quagmire. As it turns out, the network engineers have been arguing among themselves - for years - about the benefits of CDP. The security-focused engineers want it disabled. The engineers who focus on day-to-day operations want it enabled. The desktop support technicians agree with the operations group, because the Cisco VoIP phones they install can take advantage of CDP. The IT architects insist that the decision is theirs, but they don’t return phone calls when you ask for their opinions.
What will be your recommendation and why?
Should CDP be enabled?
Should it be enabled on all devices and interfaces?
How will you convince your customers that your decision is the best one and they should all abide by it, even the IT architects?
Explanation / Answer
Recommendation for configuring the CDP:
1. Only the following devices support the CDP1 and CDP2
1.1 Cisco 5500 and 2500 Series Controller
1.2 CAP enabled access points
2. The Cisco 6000 series is not supported by CDP so be careful while installing the CDP for CISCO access points.
3. The implementations of CDPv1 and CDPv2 will allow the network management through CDP, so it is a big plus for the organization’s network management.
4. You can change the configuration of CDP on the controller without changing the configuration of CDP on the access points.
CDP be enabled?Should it be enabled on all devices and interfaces?
It is always considered as a good practice to shut down the unnecessary systems in the CDP for the better network management. By doing so less chances of the attacks and bugs arises and so CDP will not send the information to the attacker basically regarding the firewall port numbers and Operating System security routines.
CDP proves to be powerful when it comes to switching information and stuffs between different nodes so it is always necessary to enable the CDP when the employee usage is high and should be disabled when the requirement reduces.
How will you convince your customers that your decision is the best one and they should all abide by it, even the IT architects?
The basic point to convince the customers and the IT architects is that you should be able to present the main advantages of CDP in-front of them and should be specific according t the audience, because the customer will consider the security instead of the background encapsulation of the CDP and the IT architect need more technical stuff and the designing schema of CDP rather than the main advantages and the running cost of implementing the CDP.