The Network Topology: Logical and Physical Design - Assignment Example

?Moving and Configuring Networks System Insert of the of the supervisor Table of contents Executive summary 2. Project goal 3. Project scope 4. Design requirements: a. User communities and network applications b. Business goals c. technical goals 5. Current state of the network 6. Logical design 7. Physical design 8. Results of network design testing 9. Implementation plan with a project schedule 10. Project budget with a return on investment calculation 11. Design document appendix Executive summary Fiction corporation is interested in relocating to a new headquarter and so it plans to transfer and upgrade its network system. The current network system has security lapses and faces slow response time and occasional downtime. In the process of moving and with the professional input of Wide-IP Company, Fiction Corporation intends to upgrade its system in order to adopt modern and standard network operations and security. The current hardware used in its network system was bought a long time ago and its application is based on the old technology. The network system upgrade will be essential in increasing system reliability, easy and economical maintenance of its components and increased speed of the data transfer process. At an estimated budgetary cost of $425,000 and a time frame of one month, Wide-IP Company will develop logical and physical design that will be useful in configuring Fiction Corporation network system. Project goal Making the correct and appropriate network technology decisions ensures that the organization attains its goals, the morale of the employees is retained, and the cost incurred is tenable with organization’s budgetary plan and financial objectives. In order to ensure that there is smooth transition of organization networking system from one location to the other, the right networking technology plan must be developed and implemented. In most cases, transferring a data center needs a flush cutover of the network system in order to supply remote systems that have access to data before and after migration. Wide-IP intends to develop a number of router configuration changes that would enable data center routers to be easily transferred, one at a time and dismantling the old lines after the installed new data centers are proven. This is essential in providing an uninterrupted user support during the transfer and reducing the ongoing operational risk. Project scope The project of transferring and developing a new networking system for Fiction Corporation will be done by the Wide IP Company that has 10 members who are proficient in system networking. With a budget of approximately $425,000, Wide IP Company will identify the requirements of Fiction Corporation, develop networking systems, establish errors and correct them, and provide and adhere to a detailed project schedule of 30 days. Design requirements User communities and network applications Fiction Corporation, a retail chain needs to move a new headquarter several miles away. Considering the distance and the chain operations, the main challenge is moving all the personnel to the new headquarters and ensuring that the data center supports all call centers and warehouse operations. Whereas the warehouse functions from Monday to Saturday, allowing one day transferring an AS/400 and developing new SNA links, most of the stores will be open for 24 hours, which will be significant in ensuring non interruption transfer of the network system. Basing on the viewpoint of data processing, the migration of network system will include as AS/400, a large UPS, NT PC and Novell servers, and multiple RS/6000 AIX application servers. The network will be made up of 100 servers for call centers and three remote warehouses .These user communities are connected through frame relay that has ISDN backup to three routers located in data center. The three routers will run a common LAN that will be shared by the headquarter staff, call centers, the warehouse and the data center. There is a high possibility for a whole network system shut down on the evening of the Friday of the last week. During this time, Fiction Corporation will run backups on every server, dismantling all headquarter employee systems and data center, and undertake reconfiguration of immovable warehouse system (Dean, 2010). Business goals The major business goals are to reduce operational inefficiency, minimize operational cost, and improve employees’ productivity. Minimizing operation cost, which is measured in terms of cost per computer per year, will be achieved by utilizing efficient computers and software, developing appropriate cost accounting measures that aim at reducing the expenses involved in purchasing spare parts of hardware components, and automating most of manual aspects such as developing efficient electronic payment system and installing accounting software to replace manual book keeping procedures. Reducing operation inefficiency, which is measured in terms of availability of network, intends to reduce the monthly downtime hours. In addition, it aims at minimizing the duration in which documents are processed by the organization. Raising employees’ productivity involves increasing employees per hour by automating computer system so that all operation hours are utilized fully. Technical goals The main technical goals are improving network’s capacity and speed and enhancing network security. Improving network capacity and speed involve replacing the PSTN lines with T3 lines and installing frame relay and site to site IP in order to enhance WAN backup security and links. Improving network security will involve creating isolated VLANS for each call center to prevent one center from accessing data from the other center’s servers, replacing hubs with managed switch in order to monitor, configure and manage your LAN, and control how data is flowing through the network and manage its accessibility. In addition, network security goals will ensure that members of staff are aware of HIPAA regulations in order to enhance their ability of managing information and data. . Current state of network The current network consist of switches hubs that link to the warehouses and call centers. The local internet service provider is linked by PSTN whereas the internet gateway is single. There is no isolated VLAN and so call center and warehouses can access data from other call centers or warehouses. In each VPN, there is no firewall and the network system is not fully secure. The data support center supports three remote warehouses and 100 offsite call centers. Further, the old headquarter consists of 4 RS/6000 AIX application servers, 20 PC servers, 2 large UPS, and 10 virtualized servers. Physical design In the new headquarters, the main floor has servers and the main frame. The main frames links with the servers. There are managed switches that emanate from different floors and connect to the main frame. The following are the features of physical design: The building has offices and stores that are equipped with category 5e wall plates and cabling. The managed switches are placed and used within the building. The managed switches assist in managing and monitoring LAN traffic. The switches play a key role in monitoring, configuring, and managing LAN. When monitoring the devices on the network, the managed switches use Simple Network Management Protocol. This protocol assists in displaying data in a format that is easily understood and so, IT managers in the central data site can excellently manage the network performance and will easily identify problems within the network and repair them without bothering to physically work on the switch. An independent router is used on the second floor to manage the VLAN, to prevent staff of retail stores from accessing critical management and clients’ information (Fitzgerald &Dennis, 2009). Logical design In order to attain business and technical goals, Wide-IP applied Cisco SAFE architecture in developing the logical design. The main goal is to provide the best practices in implementing and designing secure networks. The Cisco based logical design utilizes a modular approach that enhances flexibility in network design and facilitates trouble shooting and implementation of the design. Cisco SAFE approach has multiple layers for system security. These multiple layers operate under unified strategy of providing security and protection to the whole network system and its components. The network topology is categorized into three modules (functional areas).These are enterprise call centers and warehouses edge, service provider edge, and enterprise edge. Enterprise call centers and warehouses edge does not provide remote connection and contains the entire functions needed for independent operations that occur in within one location or functional unit of the organization. Enterprise edge consists of all functions needed to communicate between remote locations and Enterprise call centers and warehouses edge. Service provider edge represent WAN and the internet connections that are provided by internet service providers(ISP).The functional areas are made up of network modules that include access, distribution and core layer functionalities. The Access layer, which is located within the headquarter building, combines end users from the work groups and links them to the distribution layer of the building. It contains all components that enables authorized user to have network access within the building. Distribution layer, which enables routing, provides access between the core and work groups. Further, this layer controls access to varied services by executing access lists. Redundant links and switches to backbone and access to network are implemented in this layer and enables network to continue functioning even when one of the links or routers is down. Core layer functions by providing high speed link or connection between data centers and distribution server, access layer and edge(Dean, 2010). Implementation plan with schedule The migration of data center from the old headquarter to new headquarter will take place basing on a one month schedule and is expected to offer the best predicted results. In addition, the migration strategies will ensure that there are no disruption\ in call centers operations. In order to ensure that there is no interruption in the operations of network system as a result of migration, Wide-IP will develop a plan that will enable the migration to take place in phases, thus allowing managing information system (MIS) staff to concentrate on each phase at a time to prevent time wastage. A vital factor in the success of the plan is the availability of TI link between the two sites, the old site and new site, to support remote bridging and to come up with configurations for the remote routers that support both headquarters simultaneously (Oppenheimer, 2010). Breaking down the network system migration process into many stages and moving each data center router at a time will assist in developing necessary configurations for each stage and will ensure that there is an independent transfer of units that are dependent upon the data center. The transfer of network hardware and the router configuration associated with it will be undertaken during the week .In weekends, members of staff available will assist in moving application systems and testing will be carried out without disruptions or fear of incorrect network configurations .The schedule for the networking process will be one month and will be as follow: Reconfiguring call centers that connect to the first router support two more PVCs in the new headquarter location. Reconfiguring of the current headquarter router that is expected to be transferred in order to help in developing new warehouse IP addresses. Reconfiguring the routers for the stores to dial up back up to numbers in either new or old headquarter locations Moving the first router and then testing frame T1 for store access, two ISDN PRIs for backup, and TI for old location. The two ISDN PRIs are one for remote bridging and the other for stores. In the first weekend, apart from AS/400, all data center server systems and the back up of call centers will be moved.AS/400 will move with the main UPS. The second router to the new location will be moved .The 2nd store frame TI and the 3rd PRI will be established. Support systems and the skeleton MIS staff will be transferred to the new location. While retaining the old link for backup, all store routers will be configured to prefer new location links. In the second weekend, AS/400 will be moved from the old data center to the new data center in the new headquarter. There will be no activity because all staff will concentrate in this transfer. Most of the managing information systems (MIS) staff will be moved, leaving behind a small number of staff in order to provide technical support to headquarters users and other activities that may require their attention. In the third weekend, all headquarter systems and staff from the old site will be relocated to the new site. The old-new link from remote bridging will be reconfigured to DLSw for SNA support and normal routing for IPX and ISP. The backup retail server and the third counter router will be transferred to the new data center. The warehouse remote router will be left behind. In the fourth week, all store routers will be reconfigured to only support the new headquarter location. Results for networking design testing Any networking system operation is bound to face several hurdles before it becomes fully functional. One of the glitches involved moving individual network connections and systems, which needed more time and expertise. In addition to the anticipated errors in frame relay configurations, there were several hardware problems that needed more time to repair. ISDN backup worked correctly during the process of network migration and the normal frame relay problems did not affect the connectivity of the store. During the testing process, one work group applied inefficient written data base application that could not be support and resulted in increased delay during remote bridging. During the installation of the new network system, a major failure occurred when the TI links between the new site and old sites failed during peak time and the ISDN backup was triggered to support the link. Although the functioning of the ISDN line was optimal, its data rate of 64kbps was too low to provide sufficient support to the traffic in new Headquarter Novell. As a result, there were disrupted warehouse operations while the SNA connections timed out. Novell’s server shutdown affected loading that was necessary to restart SNA session but appropriate networking strategy that involved upgrading the servers ensured that the link was restored. Project budget The project is to be conducted within a budgetary limit of $500,000.The budgetary allocation will include staff expenses and other expenses related with the contract, purchases of networking components and cabling. The table shows the budgetary estimates breakdown Description Cost estimate($) Networking components 200,000 Cabling 20000 Technical team estimates(10 members of staff) 100,000 Operating expenses 100,000 Internet service provider fees(Wide-IP company ISP) 5000 Total estimate 425,000 Apart from the estimated cost in the budget estimate table, there will be fit up cost for each department. In addition, there will be maintenance and support cost that will vary with changes in funding models. The return on investment is the ratio of profitability to the investment. Wide-IP estimates that the profit from enhanced network system will be $64,000 per annum and so the rate of return on investment is (64,000/425,000)*100=15.1%. References Dean, T. (2010). Network+ Guide to Networks (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning Fitzgerald, J., & Dennis, A. (2009). Business Data Communications and Networking (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley& Sons, Inc Oppenheimer, P. (2010). Top-Down Network Design: A systems analysis approach to enterprise network design (3rd ed.).Indianapolis, IN: Cisco Press Appendix TEAM CONTRACT 1. Code of contract : Wide IP company will a) Work proactively and honestly, anticipating errors and striving to prevent them b) Keeping all team members aware of the project, their responsibility and duties 2. Participation: Wide IP company will a) Be honest in all activities b) Offer opportunity for equitable participation c) Consider new ideas and approaches 3. Communication: Wide IP company will a) Decide the team’s communication channels and methods b) Present ideas precisely and clear. Read More