Reference no: EM132898745

FIT3165 Computer networks - Monash University

An Enterprise Network Design

A Request For Proposal (RFP) to Design Wired LANs, Wireless LANs and support Backbone Wide Area Network (WAN)

1. Assignment Description
Objective
A public transport company requires its office building to be connected over a wired LAN, Wireless LAN (WLAN), and WAN connections (building to building). You have been asked to respond to the following excerpt from their RFP (Request For Proposals) in the newspaper.

Scope of the Work
At present, the total number of office employees in Melbourne is 200. Each office worker is provided with an office space or cubicle with a multimedia desktop having wired network LAN connection. Owing to a business acquisition, the number of employees at Melbourne is expected to increase substantially. The size of the Melbourne office, both Wired and Wireless LAN will increase (from 200) to 440 stations; after two new 4-storey buildings (located across the road) have been acquired to accommodate the additional office space needed to provide seating arrangements for the increased number of employees (see Figure 1 for Building-A, and Figure 2 for Building-B).

Two newly acquired buildings will accommodate all the new staff members as follows:
(i) Building A: 160 new staff,
(ii) Building B: 80 new staff.
For each building, the number of new staff will be equally distributed among each floor.

The new buildings have not been wired for network connections. Each floor has a wiring closet where necessary horizontal and vertical structured cabling can be installed. Each wiring closet is located in the Lift and Service wells area as shown in the figure 1 & figure 2.

The service wells also has vertical riser where fiber optic cables can run through floor to floor to a dedicated server room in the ground floor. The two new buildings also need a Wide Area Network (WAN) to be connected to the existing Main office network (across the road). The width of the road can be assumed to be 100 meters wide. Both the new buildings require horizontal and vertical cabling.

It is envisaged that the two new buildings in Melbourne office would support, both, wired and wireless networked office environment where each of the staff PC and their personal laptops would be equipped with office desktop high resolution video conferencing software (VoIP), along with the usual business applications such as web, email, and regular office productivity packages. It is anticipated that the average network traffic generated by each active user is estimated to be around 15-20 Mbps. The Wired LAN infrastructure needs to be designed to support the maximum peak traffic, and in addition, support the Wireless LAN with additional 20% maximum traffic. The design should show the WLAN Access Points (AP) connectivity to the wired infrastructure. At the existing main office network (across the WAN), a capacity increase will be required for key devices and their support infrastructure (e.g. Servers, Routers and/or switches) to accommodate the increased traffic volume from the new buildings. Employees are expected to access the main office network and its resources frequently. So, from the business perspective, it is important that the WAN connectivity is maintained all the time.

Loss of productivity is not an option from the network connectivity point of view.

Assignment Requirements
Submissions for this assignment should be in the form of a technical report with explanatory figures and other requirements for reporting. The assignment specifications are in the form of a request for proposal (RFP) to potential suppliers. A RFP is a solicitation often made through a bidding process by any company interested in the design and procurement of installation contract services. This assignment provides an opportunity for you to work individually and apply Data Communications and Computer Networking concepts to a practical network design. You are required to design the network, make networking recommendations based on the RFP requirements and present your solutions in a formal report. In the RFP, the company expects you to give them enough arguments in support of your network design to convince them, with respect to benefits of the proposed network and new technologies you have proposed. Go into some technical detail explaining differences between technologies. Give detailed explanation of the proposed technologies that would be integrated in the network design.

You must include the following information in response to the request for Proposal (RFP):
a) Executive Summary:
b) Introduction:
c) Project Requirements: A requirement brief is usually a detailed list of the required tasks to be completed and proposed equipment derived from Objectives and Scope of Work section of the RFP.
d) LAN, WLAN, Backbone, and WAN Design, Assumptions, and Justifications:
(i). Explain LAN, WLAN, Backbone, and WAN design logic including the choices of equipment (e.g. switches, routers, APs etc.) and structured cabling. You must propose specific devices from a particular vendor such as Cisco.
(ii). Justify switch and wireless AP locations, horizontal and vertical cable paths and lengths between the floors. Explain the routers, switches, and APs functional specifications. Assume the floor to ceiling height as 3 meters approximately including the false ceiling.
(iii). Propose an IP address version 4 strategy for the new buildings with proper Subnetting and minimal unused addresses.
(iv). Explain methods used to form estimates of network performance for each type of active devices and links. Report all the assumptions made in your network design.
e) Recommendations and Justification: A summary of your recommendations with a statement of justification.
f) Conclusion

Note: List of equipment, their specifications, technical data, and device related cabling specifications etc. should be included in the Appendix.

The technical report should contain the following important diagrams to support your proposal:
(a) A conceptual high-level diagram showing the complete network design including LAN, WLAN, Backbone, and WAN connectivity to the main office.

(b) Typical floor plans (only one floor would be sufficient for each new building) showing computer desktop layout, network topology, WLAN AP, and structured cabling.
(c) Backbone connection diagrams (using schematic diagrams of cross-section of a building showing switches, routers, and servers etc.).
(d) WAN connectivity for the two new buildings connecting with the head office building.

Attachment:- Computer networks.rar