Executive summary
This document provides a detailed description of the desired network plan and network design that will be able to support the entire networking needs and services of the company and enable the company to achieve its set goals. The design is based on the adoption of wireless technology to support broadband access to all the users in the company. This upgraded design will provide an efficient, reliable, and cost-effective means for offering communication services to end-users in terms of data, voice, and video, which require broadband access, and the entire outsourcing of the company’s services to the community. It will also ensure reliable remote access and control of the remote devices, services, and the entire network management.
Based on the upgrading and designing of the entire network, the design will incorporate existing assets such as servers (application servers, virtualized servers, and PC servers), and an average of 10,000 personal computers including laptops, high power saver backup systems consisting of 4 uninterruptible power supply (UPS). This is in addition to broadband wireless access technology, with access points for wireless connections within the buildings of the company, WLANs, wireless routers, LAN standard connection cables and adapters, and T1 linkage.
Because of the challenges in terms of the non-uniformity in the terrain, the majority of the network topology might be affected; this will be corrected with the adoption of wireless broadband access technology to deliver the threshold bandwidth capacity to each of the users within the organization without major hiccups. The wireless broadband technology will be able to deliver a minimum of the threshold bandwidth required for efficient performance at a greater rate compared with the technology that was being used within the company. The approach that is used entails the top-down network design approach, which explores divisional and group structures to find and determine the people for whom the network will provide services and from whom valuable information for successful network design is obtained.
Objectives and project goal
The goal of the entire project is to design and upgrade the entire network design used by the organization within the prescribed timelines, after which a new network design will be built and implemented within the organization. This will ensure increased overall satisfaction of the clients due to improved performance by providing amicable solutions concerning the network of the company by developing an effective network that integrates modern broadband wireless technology. This will allow faster client response, increase the productivity of the organization, and increase the speed and quality of access to network services provided that will ensure cost-effectiveness, reliability, sustainability, and profitability of the organization (Kenyon, 2002). By the end of this project, a new network design will be built and implemented within the organization.
Project scope
The overall aim of this project is to design and implement an upgraded network system that will provide the organization with efficient and reliable services within the stipulated budgetary funds and timelines. Deliverables of the project include an upgraded network design for the entire organization, efficient services that will be provided by the resulting design, the anticipated profit increase because of increased customer satisfaction from the system. The project milestone will consist of an efficiently completed and working network after the upgrade has been implemented in consideration to project constraints of both time and funding. The project will be within the stipulated budget of the total amount of $500,000, which will sustain the project until its completion in due course of less than one year, the time required to deliver a working network system for the organization.
Design requirements
Business goal
The purpose of the project is to design, build, and implement a modern network design that will ensure increased productivity within the organization, market share, revenues, and customer satisfaction by a substantially greater percentage after the implementation of the new workable network design. This is in addition to reducing the overall budgetary costs and other overhead expenditures after the adoption of the new design. This has been achieved through the thorough study and research of the customer’s corporate structure, which enables analysis of data flow and development of network topology, industry, and competition, identified mission-critical operations, policies that regard the desired vendors, and platforms, clear understanding of policies regarding the distributed authority involved in network design and implementation. The available technical expertise of the clients and staff required, and the stipulated schedule of the project are within the budgetary expectations of the entire project (Oppenheimer, 2004).
Technical goals
Technical goals to be analyzed for the new network upgrade include; scalability-this will describe the flexibility of the expected network upgrade concerning the extent of support to the growing network design in terms of additional users, overall applications, additional external network connections, and additional sites to be incorporated during the upgrade. Network performance description in terms of throughput, which describes the quantity of error-free data transmitted per unit time to each node on the network, and the available bandwidth for the entire network after the upgrade. Description of the level of accuracy of data received at any destination should be similar to data from the source across the entire network. The efficiency, delay, and response time on the network after the upgrade ensure that there is minimal delay time, and maximum response time for resources on both the remote access points.
Management and security of the entire network should be guaranteed after the overall network upgrade process, to ensure the security in communication and sharing of network resources in a convenient manner, usability or ease of access to the network and services, adaptability, availability and affordability in relation to the requirements of the organization. This analysis will enable the recommendation of reliable and efficient network technologies that are performance-oriented and ensure that the network capacity is adequate to handle the load despite variations in network traffic and to meet future expectations of the organization.
User community and data stores
The targeted user community involves the general staff within the organization. This will entail both the technical staff, skilled and unskilled labor force. The technical staff will provide user information, developer and user manuals, and overall staff training on the use of various additional resources on the upgraded network. The user community will be trained on both the usability and overall maintenance of the systems within the organization.
The data stores within the organization responsible for data warehousing and outsourcing will be incorporated with maximum security to ensure authorized access of the user community is guaranteed, as data is the most important resource of any organization. The network channels to the data stores will be maintained in a way to ensure minimal delays and maximum response time for archival and retrieval of information from the data stores. User community at various data stores will be provided with up-to-date hands-on skills on current data handling, storage, archival and backup techniques to ensure efficiency in the services provided by the entire organization after the upgrade of the entire network to ensure quality service delivery.
Network applications
The network design and upgrade will ensure that the entire network is manageable and cost-effective. It will involve the incorporation of both current applications and new applications. This will include both the user and system applications as follows; user applications-electronic mail, file transfer, access and sharing, database access and updating, groupware, web browsing, remote terminal, security surveillance, IP telephony, management reporting, CAD, graphics (document imaging, web and desktop publishing), inventory control, and electronic commerce services. System applications include authentication, authorization, backup of the network and management, remote access (download, configuration, and system startup), host addressing, and name resolution. Both these applications are analyzed in terms of the critical importance of the applications, and future plans describing the usability schedules, and period of different network applications.
The current state of the network
The organization ‘s network uses frame relay, a LAN technology that specifies the physical and logical link layers of digital communication channels using packet switching across ISDN infrastructure, this being an encapsulation technique used between LANs over WANs of the distributed organizational offices and departments. The ISDN standards used provide simultaneous transmission of digital data, voice, and video content over the entire circuits of the PSTN to all the users. The adoption of WLANs in the organizations’ network that provides a connection through access points to the internet and the subsequent use of T1 links that support considerable transfer rates of data and voice links all the remote sites, VPNs and VLANs. The network uses management protocols such as SNMP that provides network management tools required to support network management.
The current network has experienced unbalanced throughput, signal attenuation and interference, an increase in delay time, an increased workload to be processed from all the resource centers. The network traffic has also increased drastically. All these factors have affected the current status of the organization’s network and have been extensively reviewed and considered for the entire network upgrade process. The network capacity describes the available capacity for the nodes, links, switches, and routers about the technology used.
Logical design
The logical design of the network describes the way the data signals traverse through interconnected network devices which are bound to the network protocols that direct how the data moves across the entire network from the physical layer, through the network layer. Such topology protocols include twisted-pair Ethernet, local talk, and token ring. The logical design is based on the needs of the users within the organization, and the interaction between different applications with the network, both in the immediate and distant future. In the organization’s network, the upgraded network will be able to exhibit a logical design, which supports protocols such as TCP/IP, DHCP, SNMP, ARP, RARP, and ICMP among others to ensure that data signals traverse through the network and its elements efficiently. These protocols describe a standardized form of communication between the network devices (Habraken, 2003).
Physical design
This describes the overall layout of networking devices, cables and other peripherals, hence referring to the physical topology of the organization’s network various topologies will be described including the bus, star, and ring among other physical topologies. The organization’s topology being used after the upgrade is the star topology, consisting of nodes connected to a central hub within the different offices. The topology has advantages of easy troubleshooting, less cost incurred, and guaranteed functionality of the network in cases where one of the nodes fails to send packets.
Results of network design testing
The prototype of the desired network system will be tested through the unit, module, and the entire network system. For unit testing, each of the single units of the network will be tested as follows; the nodes connected to the central hubs within offices, and those with remote access. The unit testing follows module testing which involves the integration of several units together. Then overall testing of the entire system follows, which involves the integration of all the network components of the organization. These tests will be carried out according to the test plan of the prototype system and documented accordingly, including any changes made to the network prototype system. After the successful tests have been done and the system has been optimized, the prototype system is implemented within the organization in phases to enable the adaptation of the new upgraded network design within the organization.
References
Habraken, W, J. (2003). Absolute beginner’s guide to networking. Indianapolis: Que Publishing. Web.
Kenyon, T. (2002). High-performance data network design: design techniques and tools. Wildwood Avenue: Digital Press. Web.
Oppenheimer, P. (2004). Top-down network design. Indianapolis: Cisco Press. Web.