Five years ago, Calgary Kids' Cloth Ltd was just a small retail store in downtown Calgary. The company started their own factory in SE Calgary to produce outdoor clothes for kids. Two years later, the product became popular and the company decided to expand their business a cross Canada by opening more retail stores on Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and second store in Calgary. The company also expanded its factory in Calgary to a new product line. Each retail store manages the inventory and accounting information by themselves and faxes the data back to the Company Head office in Calgary daily, for sales and monthly for inventory. Some stores use their own software for accounting and inventory some just use paper to keep track of all information. The Head office in Calgary was using in-house software to manage the accounting, inventory, sales and marketing information and also using leased line connections to the factory.
Up to this year, the company had 70 retail stores across Canada and another factory in southern Ontario to supply the product in eastern Canada. All retail stores are using computers to keep their accounting, inventory and sales information and use modems to transfer data to the head office.
The Company Head office has an Access Server with five telephone lines to receive the dialup connection from the 70 retail stores everyday. Each telephone line is used for 14 stores, with each store dialing to the head office half an hour apart, starting from midnight.
Some stores have their own Internet connection to the computer that is used for the store management program and some stores have another separate computer to connect to the Internet and some don't have an Internet connection at all.
The president of the company want to open 10 more locations in Canada and start to export the product to the USA and Europe and also interested in opening an online store on the Internet.
1. Detail a network design for the Local Area Network for the new stores
2. Create an IT and Security Policy for all the retail stores, factories and head office.
- Include network diagrams for the final design
- Do costing of the design, and list all product usage.
- It is important that your design be justified using your own conclusions.