Network Infrastructure Proposal Essay For Color Ability Corporation.

Below are the notes collected during an interview session with the management team.

• CAC employees need access to email, which they currently get from their ISP. The email System that the ISP provide uses a web client that CAC employees can access over the Internet. CAC employees are also able to access this email from their home computers.
• CAC want to be able to set up email accounts for employees to use while they are working with them.

It is necessary for managers and employees to share files between themselves. These files are usually spreadsheets and documents, but sometimes, they must send large film files back and forth between the mobile workers and the office. Files must be available for download during the day, and also at night, when employees are away from the office. These film files are usually between 5 GB and 20 GB in size.

• The management wants some project files to be kept securely in a central location and can be accessed and shared only by the department managers.
• Color printers that are also capable of making copies are required for each workspace –one on each floor of the new Brisbane office and one in the Sydney office. Because the printers are expensive, it is necessary for everyone to be able to print to it when they are inthe office. Some of the storyboard documents are over 100 pages, with lots of graphics.
• Wireless internet access should be made available in all five departments.

All of the gathered information and the proposed technical solution must be assembled into a format that makes sense to the company who has asked you to provide a solution. The formal report usually contains many different sections, including:

• Project proposal, comprising needs statement; goals and objectives; methodology and timetable; technical solutions and evaluation; budget summary; future plans
• Recommendations and Conclusions
• Bibliography and List of Refences
• Appended information

The report is often presented to various groups for approval. When presenting the report, present it in a confident, professional, and enthusiastic manner. The report must be technically accurate and free from spelling and grammatical errors.

Businesses benefit and get more opportunities by designing and implementing a proper network. This is because a good network enables the business to automate its operation and facilitate secure communication and sharing of resources among the employees regardless of where they are working from. However, this depends of the choices of the equipment use during network design. A well-designed network has devices that have high level security and performance features. Additionally, the choice of network topology chosen will determine the overall network performance, reliability, security, and the ability to scale (Pop, 2012).

Color Ability Corporation (CAC) is a business company in Australia whose main business operations are advertising and marketing. Currently, the company’s head office is occupying level 10 and 11 of the X-Tower with another branch in Sydney. Over the years in business, CAC has grown substantially and the current office space does not fit the growing size of the business. As a result, CAC has procured a new four-story building in one of the Brisbane suburbs and want to move in in 3 months. This paper will focus on proposing the various network components that should be used by CAC in implementing the network in the new building. Additionally, it will recommend desirable computer specification for the various departments in order to ensure that maximum business productivity. The paper will also discuss IP addressing and subnetting scheme that should be adopted by CAC.

The new building that has been procured by CAC have not been network as such, they cannot move in to occupy it. CAC want to first lay out the network infrastructure before moving in and to ensure that all the requirements that have been stated have been met within a period of three months.

The following are the objectives that CAC wants to achieve by the end of this project:

• Provide computer systems for the different departments and use
• Provide a printer models to be shared by employees and another type for the managers
• Recommend the various network devices to be used while setting up the network
• Provide network security strategies
• Determine the internal services that should be offered by CAC

The methodology that will be employed in this project will involve breaking down into various milestones/activities/ stages. The milestones are dependent on each other, therefore, to successfully accomplish this project it is important to critically analyze and evaluate the requirements of every milestone and ensure that they have been met before moving to the next one. The various milestones include planning, designing, implementing, testing, and documentation.

Table 1: Project Schedule

Color Ability Corporation is a marketing company as such, heavy printing will be done every day. Therefore, there is need for the company to have a printer with high speed performance and produces professional quality prints. CAC needs to kinds of printers because of the details laid out in their requirements. One printer is to be shred among employees and the other model is to ensure every manger in every department has a printer.  

Printer for Managers

Managers will require a colored light weight printer because their printings needs are not heavy. As such, the recommended printer that can be used by managers is HP-LaserJet Enterprise M553dn color printer. This is a small-scale printer that has the ability to print and scan both sides and can be connected to the network if needed. In terms of performance, its print speed is high compared to other printers of the similar caliber and is energy efficient. Managers can still be able to print even when the printer is in sleep mode. The figure below shows how this printer looks like:

Objectives

CAC managers will be printing sensitive information and as such this printer offers the ability to secure print jobs and one can authorize the printing process to start after being authenticated using a pin. Managing print jobs is also easy and it automatically detects when printing papers have been added and when they are finished.

Printer for Employees

The employees at CAC will be carrying out heavy printing and because the company has suggested that every departments will have one printer to be shared among employees working in that department. This means that the printer should be very powerful and reliable to handle the heavy printing. As such, it is recommended that CAC can acquire Xerox Phaser 7400 DFX which is a powerful and reliable that will be able to handle the needs of every department. This printer has the ability to print A6, A5, A4, and A3 print papers. This printer has a paper capacity of 3000 sheets and of up to 40ppm. Additionally, the highest duty cycle per month is 150000 pages.

This printer is intelligent enough such that when printing papers is exhausted in one trey it automatically switches to another trey and the printing process continues. It has a hard disk capacity of 20GB, RAM 4GB, and a processing speed of 800MHz.

The choice of networking devices used in a network will dictate the overall performance, security, scalability, and reliability of the network. As such, it is important that when planning to set up a network infrastructure choose the network devices that have advanced security features, high performance, and support network expansion. The following device models are proposed to be used for setting up the network

Router

Cisco RV series router is recommended to be used in setting up the network for the new CAC building. Router is a very crucial network device since heavy traffic will be going through the network because it the device that connects internal network to another external network. Thus, when choosing a router, it is important to select a router with advance security features so as to protect the network from external attacks. This router supports VPN allowing the network to access network resources remotely from anywhere (Cisco, 2018).

Some of the benefits of using this router are advanced encryption capabilities, easy configuration and management, authentication abilities, and in-built firewall to ensure that the network remain secure and keeping the network resources.

Switch

Cisco SG250 26-port switch is the best switch to that will be able to handle all the wired connection within the company. This switch has two port that is dedicated to expanding the network and add more devices without affecting the network infrastructure.  

The benefits of using this switch include advanced feature for easy management and configuration, high reliability, high performance, and is cost effective because it requires little maintenance. Additionally, it has the capacity to increase the speed of a slow network to improve communication down increases transfer rates and offer basic security features that is needed to maintain security of the network to ensure the security of the network resources such as confidential data that is shared within the network. Furthermore, this switch consumes less energy making it a more convenient and better choice for CAC.

Methodology

Wireless Access Point

Wireless connectivity is very important to ensure that employees are connected to the network even using wireless devices such as tablets, smartphones, and tablets. As such, it is important to use a strong wireless access point that will be able to cover bigger radius and allow employees to work with greater flexibility. Cisco 100 series is the best wireless access point that will be able to handle the wireless connection because it is powerful, affordable, and more reliable.

The benefits of using this WAP is that configuration and management is easy and simple and has a friendly and intuitive web interface to manage it.  Additionally, it offers high speed wireless connection and utilizes 802.11ac/n standards to enhance network security. This device can be used to easily scale the network (Cisco, 2018).

The network will be of less benefits if it has no internet connection. Internet service providers are responsible for providing internet connectivity to the local network and ensure that employees are able to connect with their customers (Allena, 2018). CAC being an advertising company requires a stable and reliable internet connection in order to ensure smooth flow of information to the target audience. The choice of the ISP will greatly affect the overall performance of the network and productivity. As such, it is necessary for CAC to choose an ISP that will be able to offer high speed internet connection that is stable and reliable. Additionally, it should guarantee high level of availability to ensure business continuity (Karyakina and Melnikov,2017, p. 254). There exist many internet service providers in Australia, but it is important to review all the available options based on the internet speed, subscription fee, and reliability. The table below give a comparison of two ISPs in Australia:

Table 6: Local Internet Service Providers

From the table above, Vodafone is the best ISP choice despite Exetel being cheaper. This is because based on the review and reputation Vodafone offer reliable, high speed internet connectivity. Additionally, CAC will enjoy an efficient 24/7 customer support through phone calls, live chat, emails, and in-person support. Vodafone is one of the reliable internet service providers and assures high availability, thus, CAC should acquire its internet connection it.

CAC employees expect certain services to be offered by the network in order for them to effectively and efficiently carry out their responsibilities in meeting the business objectives.

Table 7: Network Services

Table 8: Requirement Table

The current ISP has provided CAC with private IP (192.168.0.0/24) and public IP address (194.32.9.0/28).

Table 9: Subnets

Table 10: IP Addresses

Network security is very essential to any company. Organizations are now investing heavily in network security to ensure that they protect their sensitive resources from external threats and attacks. One way of achieving this is by employing the use of both private and public IP addresses (Feuer, 2013). This enables the company to mask the private addresses of the devices by only allowing the external users to see the public IP addresses. By doing so, network security is enhanced. The malicious traffic and programs sent by cybercriminals cannot get to the network because the they don’t have access to the private IP address (LI, 2012, p. 1373). As such, Color ability corporation can implement this strategy in order to improve their network security.

Table 11: Project Estimated Budget

The company is expected to grow in future as such, the network should be flexible enough to allow addition of more network devices to the network without affecting the overall network infrastructure.  

Conclusion

The choice of the network devices used in a network matters a lot because the overall company productivity depends on it. Thus, it is important to choose the network components that are reliable and have high performance. However, the network might be really good but if the end user devices are unreliable then the productivity is reduced, therefore, it is equally important to acquire powerful end user computers in order to take advantage of the high-performance network. Therefore, it is recommended that Color Ability Corporation adopt this proposal in order to meet its objectives.

References

Allena, B. (2018). Importance of ISP's. [online] Erply.com. Available at: https://erply.com/importance-of-isps/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Bird, D. and Harwood, M. (2010). Networking Components and Devices | Introduction | Pearson IT Certification. [online] Pearsonitcertification.com. Available at: https://www.pearsonitcertification.com/articles/article.aspx?p=30191 [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

CertificationKits, C. (2018). What is the best Cisco CCNA Lab Switch? – CertificationKits.com. [online] Certificationkits.com. Available at: https://www.certificationkits.com/what-is-the-best-cisco-ccna-lab-switch/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Cisco (2018). Best Small Business Routers - Cisco. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/small-business/routers.html [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Cisco (2018). Cisco IT Best Practices. Cisco IP addressing Policy. [ebook] Cisco, pp.5-10. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ciscoitatwork/downloads/ciscoitatwork/pdf/Cisco_IT_IP_Addressing_Best_Practices.pdf [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Cisco (2018). Cisco Small Business 300 Series Wireless Access Points. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/small-business-300-series-wireless-access-points/index.html [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Feuer, M. (2013). Benefits and Requirements of Flexible-Grid ROADMs and Networks [Invited]. Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, 5(10), p.A19.

Karyakina and Melnikov (2017). Comparison of methods for predicting the customer churn in Internet service provider companies. Machine Learning and Data Analysis, 3(4), pp.250-256

LI, Q. (2012). Design and implementation of network firewall system based on Godson CPU. Journal of Computer Applications, 28(6), pp.1372-1375.

Pop, P. (2012). Generalized network design problems. Berlin: De Gruyter.