Network Management: Analysis of Network Utilization and Frame Size

This assignment delves into key aspects of network management, focusing on network utilization and frame size analysis. It addresses the expected percentage utilization for a network, highlighting that a network is considered highly efficient at 50%, with wide area networks averaging around 70%. The assignment also analyzes the reasonableness of an average frame size of 1203 for data packets, referencing the Internet Engineering Task Force's RFC 2544 Benchmark Standards, which suggests an optimal range between 1024 and 1518. The solution explains how the frame size of 1203 aligns with these standards, considering factors like payload, inter-frame gaps, and the role of Ethernet frames in transporting network packets across various network types.

Running head: NETWORK MANAGEMENT
Network Management
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

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1. What is an expected percentage utilization for a network?
Ans: Network Utilization is nothing but the ratio between the network traffic of the current state
and the maximum traffic capacity that can be handled by the port. Network Utilization also refers
to the amount of the bandwidth that is to be utilized by the network. The percentage of network
is considered to be idle or the percentage having the high efficiency is 50%. For wide area
network or WAN, 70% is the average network utilization. According to the typical rule the
average network utilization should not exceed more than 37% for a hub based Ethernet LAN (Xu
et al., 2013).
2. The protocol analyser shows that the average frame size of data packets being delivered
to and from the campus network’s Internet connection is 1203. Is this a reasonable
average? Justify your answer.
Ans:” Internet Engineering Task Force” or the IETF established the RFC 2544 Benchmark
Standards and according to this standard the connection is best when it lies between the range of
1024 to 1518. This is stated by the manufacturers of the network equipment and the service
providers and according to the analyser of the protocol inter connection is 1024, so it can be
considered that the frame size of 1203 is the perfect size. Seven predefined frame sizes are
supported by the RFC 2544 test suite and this predefined frame sizes includes 64, 128, 256, 512,
1024, 1280 and 1518 which is used for the simulation of the various types of network conditions
(Wang et al., 2015). The payload for MTU 1203 therefore the total number of bytes can be stated
as 1203+8+6+6+2+4= 1229 bytes and along with this there is also an inter-frame gap of 12
bytes, this helps in stating that 1241 is the total number of each frame which will be going out of
the host. The frame based protocol is mostly used by the LAN but it can also be used by the
MAN and WAN network (Moreno et al., 2013). The Ethernet frame is mainly designed for the

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purpose of transporting the packets or the network packets from the sending node or the host
which is in the form of Unicast or Multicast or Broadband Ethernet network which in turn is
capable of supporting of the various types of services. Besides all this the Ethernet frame is also
in the asynchronous form.

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References:
Moreno, I. S., Garraghan, P., Townend, P., & Xu, J. (2013, March). An approach for
characterizing workloads in google cloud to derive realistic resource utilization models.
In Service Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), 2013 IEEE 7th International
Symposium on (pp. 49-60). IEEE.
Wang, Y., Liu, Y., Tao, X., & He, Q. (2015). An FPGA-based high-speed network performance
measurement for RFC 2544. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and
Networking, 2015(1), 2.
Xu, Gaochao, Junjie Pang, and Xiaodong Fu. "A load balancing model based on cloud
partitioning for the public cloud." Tsinghua Science and Technology 18, no. 1 (2013): 34-
39.