The Palo Alto AREDN network is built around the following design objectives:
- Power-resilient: for communication to work end-to-end, every part of the network will remain powered end-to-end. Typical endpoints will be laptop computers and cellular phones in WiFi mode. These can be powered by solar panels, generators, or batteries. For the network itself, power-efficient networking equipment will be used.
- Operationally-resilient: redundancy and hot fail-over, where practical, make the network more resilient against the damaging effects of earthquakes. Buildings will collapse. Antennas will become misaligned. Having redundant instances of critical servers located in different places reduce the likelihood of having the entire network knocked out by physical damage. Using antennas with sufficiently broad beams reduce the likelihood of misalignment.
- Personnel-resilient: Multiple, skilled people will be needed for operating and maintaining each component of the system so that one person does not become a single point-of-failure.
- Minimally complex: the network will be maintained by volunteers. The network should be simple by design. Its nodes should be easily maintained and replaced, both in peacetime and during an incident. Use the fewest nodes to achieve the other design principles.
- Standards-based protocols: the network and the software it uses should take maximum advantage of standards-based communications protocols. Reliability comes from good design and testing. Standards-based protocols have withstood the test of time.
- Commercial off-the-shelf equipment: modern, readily-available networking components that are competitively priced make practical the acquisition, deployment and maintenance of the physical network. Prefer fewer, rather than more. vendors for specific component types. Select vendors who offer a variety of components for a given type. Prefer vendors who offer excellent network management solutions.
- Sound software design practices: the network itself is really a combination of networking devices and software services such as email and file sharing. Use quality software components as elements and minimal bespoke software to interface them together. Provide for periodic testing of all software services. Provide for off-site and on-site code repositories. Enforce code reviews for bespoke software.
- Secure: use accepted best practices for maintaining security that is on par with the practices of other wireless internet service providers.
- User-friendliness: inexperienced users should find it relatively easy to use the network. Difficulty should be on-par with using home WiFi and internet-based social media sites.
- Cost-effective: design for affordability and long-term maintenance costs.