Reference no: EM132609570

LD7082 Computer Networks & Security - Northumbria University

Learning Outcome 1: Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding and critical evaluation of essential network design principles and security implementation at all OSI layers.

Learning Outcome 2: Design, implement, test and document a small LAN involving the use of routers and switches.

Learning Outcome 3: Critically analyse the main goals and concepts of network security and apply techniques to support message integrity, confidentiality, authenticationand network access.

Learning Outcome 4: Critically appraise social, ethical and accessibility considerations in network and security design solution.

Scenario Description: Cottonwood Hill Library

The Cottonwood Hill library has been serving the local community for over a decade. The library holds a vast treasure of books, journals, reports, magazines, movies, audio and e-books. Students and professionals of all ages benefits from this library. To meet the increasing demands, library is growing and expanding every year. Up till now all processes were handled either manually or with the help of very simple spread sheets. To keep up with the escalating needs of the community, the library is going through a refurbishment and modernization, thus introducing coherent and integrated system, to manage all running operations of the library. The new refurbishment plan includes setting up two computer labs (consisting of 10-15 computers) on each floor. The design should follow a topology that all the computers should be centrally administered by a server machine for authentication purpose and should be able to access Internet to access library online portal from any computers. Users should be able to utilize printing services from any machine. The proposed computer lab should consider network security paramount for the availability of network to minimize any downtime. Considering these computers will be available to users on first come first serve basis for a limited period of time thus management belief computer network security, reliability, scalability and performance is imperative for the user experience as well as managing the networking robustly and securely. For this purpose, you are hired as a Network Engineer, to analyse the requirements of the Cottonwood Hill Library for a robust solution to their existing problem.

Section 1: Research
For network design, there is no one "good network design," and there is certainly no "one size fits all." A good network design is based on many concepts, some of which are summarized by key general principles: Critically appraise network design principles to achieve performance, scalability and security at different layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model.

Section 2: - Design
For a given scenario, students are required to design, configure and troubleshoot network using virtual equipment and simulate topologies, connections, protocolsand implement security configuration. Design and configuration evidences should be included in the report as a walk through snippets.

Section 3: - Evaluation
Critically evaluate your design implementation effectiveness in terms of access control, user privileges, and effective use of IPSec VPN, hardening the devices, security features of hardware devices such as firewalls, switches, and routers.

Section 4 - Ethical Considerations
Computer security designers should act in a professional manner and show due diligence to comply with legal obligations particularly related to CIA. Critically discuss what social and ethical considerations to be addressed to protect the proposed network design from any cyber threats.

Attachment:- Computer Networks and Security.rar