CSC00240 Designing A Small Network For News Organization Assessment 2 Answer

Answer :

Unit Code – CSC00240

Unit Name – Data Communications and Networks

Case Study Title – Designing a Small Network

Executive Summary

This assessment report deals in designing a small network for a small news organization. The news organization is going to start a new office at Sydney, Australia location. Where they rented an entire floor in an office building in the Sydney CBD. The rented space is 35 meters wide, 40 meters long and 3.2 meters in hight. Company will be required to establish four departments at that office. The name of the departments is video department, editorial department, administration department and print department. We are tasked to design the required LAN and WLAN network that fulfil all the needs of the organization that mainly includes provide internet connectivity with better performance using IPv4 and IPv6 addressing scheme. A proposed network design is presented in the report that describe all the network devices used in the design and LAN connectivity within network. The prepared design is simple and easy to implement with lower budget.   

Introduction

We have tasked to design a local area network for a small news organization. The news organization is going to start a new branch office at Sydney Australia. They rented an office floor in a building at Sydney CBD. The office floor is 35 meters wide, 40 meters long and 3.2 meter in hight. The organisation has four department named as administration, video, editorial and print department. All the four departments are connected by wireless and wired local area network (WLAN and LAN) connectivity. All four departments are placed in different LANs to maintain security in the network but can communicate with each other. The network is capable of supporting video, voice and data communication between them. The installed wireless network is accessible all over the floor and any worker can connect their own device wirelessly. This wireless network is secured, so no outsider can connect with the network. The whole system is organized to use both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses and the proposed network is enough expendable in terms of data rate and increasing number of users.

Task 1 – Local Area Network Design

1. Design description

A LAN diagram is represented in the above figure. The proposed network diagram is based on cisco’s N-tier hierarchical model [1]. Where the core router (ISP) is placed at the starting of the network. That further connects distributed router. Main internet connectivity is provided by the ISP or core router to the internal network. The distributed router connects access switch. This switch connects four routers that belongs to four different departments at that floor. A printer is installed in the network that is accessible by all departments. The server is configured with email and video chat software service that is also accessible by all the departments. Both the printer and server are connected to the main switch, access switch, for added security. This access switch also connects with a wireless access point that covers entire floor and accessible by all authenticated users. This access point is configured with WPA2 security and able to connect end user system to internet and company network. Further, each department installed with required number of PCs and an IP phone for video and voice communication between departments. The complete network uses both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing scheme and fulfil all the demand of the news organization.

2. Details of device used

Here is the list and description of the devices that we have use in this network design configuration. 

• Router – The Cisco’s 4221 ISR (Integrated Service Router) router in our configuration. This category of routers is beneficial to be used in future upgradations just because of its digitally ready platform, capability of intelligent networking. These are also sustenance improved performance of network and better data transfer bandwidth with scalability and flexibility. Another useful benefit of this router includes, support of cisco intent-based networking, DNA architecture (digital network architecture), support of VoIP devices, easy to maintain and price effective. 
• Switches – The Cisco’s 2960, 24 port catalyst switches are used in this configuration to deliver wired connectivity to the devices like workstations, IP phones, access points (APs). These are top layer 2 edge category switches that deliver better-quality and highly protected operative bandwidth with enhanced sustainability. This class of switches is originated from the series of stand-alone switches that has fast ethernet connectivity and can deliver 1 Gb pluggable uplinks. These are capable to provide fast wired connectivity that satisfy organization requirements. 
• Wireless Access Points or AP – We use Cisco’s Aironet 4800 wire-less access point (AP) in our network designing, to deliver connect wire-less devices. Aironet 4800 is a better performing and highly secured equipment that provide better network throughput with-out decreasing performance of the network. Aironet has a smart capturing feature that usage Cisco’s DNA center for in-depth examination, in-built hyper positioning feature, supporting self-issue detection and emanates with four in-built antennas to deliver better speed in Wi-Fi connectivity. Aironet 4800 delivers 2.6 Gb per second data rate with its each antenna with support of 802.11ac wave 2 support and compatible of both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio bands that are capable of covering the entire office floor.
• Cable – We use category 6a cables (CAT6a) to provide wired connectivity to the designed network. CAT 6a is an upgrade type of CAT 6 cable standard which is capable in delivering up to 10 Giga bit wired connectivity at the distance of 100 meters. This cable type supports up to 10 Gb per second data rate at a standard band-width of 500MHz with its feature of alien cross-talk. This feature allows to run the 10G-BASE-T standard to the distance of 100 meters. So, it is sufficient to provide the enough bandwidth to support our daily used applications. 

3. Costing of design

The overall design cost is calculated by the analysing the total cost of equipment used in the network designing. As approximate costing of the design is described in the below table.

The total cost of the design is approx. $104454. This is the initial amount that is needed to design and prepared the proposed network for the news organization.

Task 2 – IP Addressing Scheme

Here is the IP addressing details for both IPv4 and IPv6 that we are using in the proposed network design.

IPv4 addresses – 

 IPv6 addresses –