Which network design approach prioritizes establishing a functioning network first, focusing on hardware, bandwidth, security, and related decisions?

• A. Bottom-Up Approach
• B. Top-Down Approach
• C. Hybrid Approach
• D. Agile Approach

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is prioritizing a working network by grounding decisions in the actual hardware, links, and immediate security needs first. This is the Bottom-Up approach: you start with the tangible infrastructure—switches, routers, cabling, capacity of links—and verify that the network can function with realistic performance targets before layering on higher-level policies, governance, or management plans. By proving the connectivity and performance at the foundation, you uncover real constraints early and can design around them, ensuring the resulting network is feasible, scalable, and secure in practice.

This perspective helps you avoid building around assumptions that might not hold once the hardware is deployed. It also lets you validate security controls at the network edge and within the devices themselves as you establish the baseline, then add more complex policies or evolving requirements once the foundations are solid. Other approaches might start from goals or policies and iterate upward or blend methods, but they don't emphasize getting a functional, hardware-grounded network in place first in the same direct way.