Reference no: EM131207720

Assignment: XYZ Company Troubleshooting and Maintenance Plan

In XYZ Company is heavily invested in e-Commerce with all retail locations' Point of Sale systems connected so that it maintains a dynamic inventory and automatically generates restock orders. The XYZ Company engineers have configured the WAN-based Intranet using IPSec to support all of these locations via encrypted VPN links connected to the nearest regional distribution center.

XYZ Company has an enterprise network consisting of a core backbone, corporate campus, two data centers, regional distribution centers, and Internet Edge with a DMZ. For better security, the retail Point of Sale systems does not have direct Internet access. At the corporate campus, the seven departments in the company include Finance, Operations, Human Resources, Sales, Marketing, Technology, and the Corporate Executive Office. The company provides appropriate computing equipment to all of its employees. It also provides remote access for the system and network administrators using company-provided encrypted laptops and two factor authentication to access the XYZ Company network in order to provide off-hours support.

Due to recent major security concerns in its campus network, XYZ Company redesigned the infrastructure so that it:

• Implements VLAN segments segregating servers, workstations, and printers on separate VLANs.
• Implements Port Security to protect against MAC layer attacks.
• Implements firewalls between VLANs to protect against VLAN attacks.
• Protects against spoofing attacks.
• Secures the network switches.

Based on your prior success in other networking endeavors, your supervisor has asked you to write a detailed troubleshooting and maintenance plan for your fellow network engineers for when they are on call. Additionally, this plan will be the template for the other system administrators to write troubleshooting and maintenance plans for their areas of expertise.

Write a six to ten page paper in which you:

1. Describe the routing and switching infrastructure and the routing protocols used in the environment.

2. Illustrate the secure routing and switching infrastructure topology through the use of graphical tools in Microsoft Word or Visio, or an open source alternative such as Dia. Include a depiction of all core elements of the routing and infrastructure topology using color-keyed symbols to indicate the functionality of each item. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length.

3. Suggest one overall troubleshooting methodology that you would use for your troubleshooting and maintenance plan. Provide a rationale to support your suggestion.

4. Create the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance processes that your fellow network engineers must follow in order to maintain the health of the network. Provide a rationale to support of your suggestion(s).

5. Analyze whether or not other system administrators can use the template of your plan to write troubleshooting and maintenance plans for their areas of expertise. Justify your response.

6. Use at least three quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the professor's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Describe and develop maintenance methods, and processes and procedures through the use of networking tools, resources, and techniques.
• Summarize and develop troubleshooting processes for enterprise networks.
• Explain and plan the troubleshooting related to network performance.
• Describe, maintain, and troubleshoot network security issues for branch and remote office locations.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in internetworking troubleshooting.
• Write clearly and concisely about internetworking troubleshooting using proper writing mechanics.