Chapter12.Network Stability

Chapter 12. Network Stability

A network's stability is paramount to its operational success. Nobody likes it when a network crashes, or suddenly becomes so overwhelmed that it's temporarily useless. Many factors make up a network's overall stability, including the age and reliability of its hardware, as well as the consistency of its configuration. But the one thing that tends to get overlooked is the network's address space. Fiber cuts and fires tend to grab the headlines, but it is the address space that can either detract from your network's operational stability or be exploited and used to launch attacks.

This chapter helps round our your appreciation of the role of an IP address space relative to a network's stability and security. We'll examine some of the problems that can be caused by operating anomalies that affect a network's address space, as well as attacks made via an address space. We'll also look at some of the solutions to these potential problems and will evaluate their effectiveness in today's Internet environment.