LAN Design for Return2Fender Company Report (Assessment)

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Return2Fender is a transport company with offices located in different cities. Being a transport company there is need for effective communication. The staffs operating in different offices need to communicate and share resources easily with one another. This necessitates the requirements of ensuring a network is designed to link all the offices without compromising performance for the sake of business enhancement and continuity.

This will keep in line with the emerging information technology trend where efficient networking technologies are a must. This will help take care of the steady growth rate of network traffic, new networking services and technological advancement. The implementation model to be adopted by Return2Fender Company is the hierarchical model. This design is modular and hence very suitable for enterprise networks.

This design implements three specific layers each performing a specific network service. These layers are named the access layer, distribution layer and finally the core layer. The access layer is implemented at branch offices known to run low-speed circuits. The branch offices aggregate at distribution office which further aggregate at the core office. This kind of design is modular enhancing scalability and efficient bandwidth utilization as compared to flat networks.

Request for proposal requirements

The following is a list of requirements for Return2Fender Company:

Design of a LAN for Melbourne office with a capacity to hold 100 desktop computers as well as accommodate the increment of the desktop computers from 100 to 700. The network design should be configured to allow IP telephony via VOIP technology. After design, the network bandwidth should be able to transmit a capacity of 2-5Mbps. The two offices at Melbourne separated across the road need to be linked. The network should be able to support desktop video conferencing, office packages and webmail. It is expected the two-storey buildings acquired whose floor space measurements are 100m x 30m will accommodate a capacity of 30 users. The figure below gives a broad overview of the current scenario at Return2Fender Company and the anticipated expansion.

Office LocationNumber of employeesDesktop Per Employee & Connection typeAnticipated growth
Sydney300Multimedia desktop, 100Mbps
Melbourne100Multimedia desktop, 100Mbps100 to 700 stations, two ten storey building acquisition across the road, desktop video conferencing, web email & office packages, VOIP phones. Traffic per user estimated to range between 2-5Mbps
Adelaide100Multimedia desktop, 100Mbps
Brisbane100Multimedia desktop, 100Mbps
Perth100Multimedia desktop, 100Mbps

Figure 1 LAN design for a typical floor.

A star topology will be used in this network design. This topology will lead to all desktop computers being connected to a switch as a central device forming a star-like structure. This being the best design for the current scenario, it also has a drawback such that in the event of a switch failure, all the computer desktops and VOIP phones will be disconnected from the network. A switch with QOS (Quality of service) is required.

This switch has the capability to filter voice trafficability as well as perform prioritization. Bearing in mind about the anticipated rate of bandwidth transmission per person i.e. 2-5Mbps and the floor size of 100m x 30m, the selected switch a part from having QOS feature it should be a layer two 10/100Mbps switch. The switch should be able to cover 100m in diameter. The client’s configuration will be a full-duplex of 10Mbps while servers will be configured to have full-duplex of 100Mbps. The choice switch is a Cisco switch with 48 ports. Some of the ports will be configured for VOIP. In addition to that, there will be a patch panel, to facilitate RJ45 and RJ11wall plates’ connection to the switch. The figure below shows the layout plan for the computer desktops, network topology and the lengths of cables required.

Computer layout plan at floor level.
Figure 1: computer layout plan at floor level.
Patch panel and patch cables.
Figure 2: patch panel and patch cables.

The switch will be located inside a switch mounting rack at a corner beside the short side of the room (30m). Every floor will have a similar setting with all the switches having a cable running from it to a core switch of high specifications. A server room partition will be created on the top most room. This is where we will have a switch rack mounted with a core switch. With the assumption of the height of each floor being 3 meters we will put an additional one meter to take care of the ceiling height making a total height of 4 meters per floor. For one ten storey building this will bring the total height to about 40 meters.

Recommendation and justification of media type to be used

The media type to be used is UTP CAT 6. This is because of its high frequency of data transmission in addition to greater bandwidth. CAT 6 has improved immunity from noise coming from external factors minimizing operation errors. This cable is very suitable for networks which will implement video and audio streaming and also VOIP. Due to advancement in internet technologies developers are designing applications which executes at speeds of over 1 GB/s and this is well handled with CAT 6.

This connection will be suitable for the floors computer desktops connections to the RJ45 phase plates, and from the Phase plates to the patch panels, from the patch panels to switch connections and finally from the floor rooms switch to the server room core switch. With the above mentioned factors Return2Fender will be assured with reliable communication brought about by fewer re-transmission requests which are mostly brought about by corrupt or damaged data packets and also lost data packets.

For the connection of the newly acquired two ten storey building across the road to the existing LAN in Melbourne coaxial cable will be used. The reason being it can serve long distances and the bandwidth is quite high. For example 10Base2 coaxial cable commonly referred to as thinnet or cheapernet has a diameter of only 6mm and can carry a signal up to a distance of 185 meters without any interference. This cable can transmit with speeds close to 10Gbps.

List of equipment and cabling specifications

The table below shows list of equipment to be implemented in Return2Fender Transport Company.

IndexEquipmentCabling specifications
1Desktop computersFitted with at least one RJ45 network card. The card should be able to handle maximum speed of 1Gbps
2Cisco switch(Catalyst 6500) with 48 ports48 RJ45 ports, upgradable to voice
3IP PhonesRJ45 and RJ11 ports
4RouterEither wireless or wired with RJ45 connection and serial port connection
5Patch panelCat 6 patch panel

The switch QOS mode should be enabled to allow communication with the IP phones. Switch interfaces to be used on IP phones should be configured appropriately. Queue scheduling should be enabled on the switches. Input and output scheduling need to be enabled. Uplink interfaces linking to the distribution switch needs to be configured as well. When all the requirements are met and implemented successfully Return2fender Transport Company will be able to execute its duties with very minimal challenges on their network. If at all there are any challenges, this will be easily resolved due to the layer approach of design implemented.

Network analysis

Rowwww.yahoo.com framesMy.usf.comBrief Explanation of Activity
i)1-28-9DNS Request to find IP address for
common name & DNS Response
ii)3-510-12Three-way handshake
iii)13-20
iv)621“Get” request for web page
v)722First packet from web server with web
page content.
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