Chase Grammar School's Network Solution: User-Centric Design Essay.

It was boarders who were most affected. the legacy access points would permit only 5 devices to connect simultaneously. and with an average of 12 students in each accommodation block should a 6th attempt to connect it would crash losing all connections. As a home away from home for boarders it's vital for Chase Grammar School to provide all the essentials. including WiFi.

Foreign students fl particular are heavy bandwidth consumers, regularly using VIOP solutions like Skype FaceTime and Google Hangouts to stay in touch with friends and family back home. This lead to issues with bandwidth hogging to the extent that some pupils struggled to load webpages before the browser timed out. This was a major cause of frustration especially amongst students preparing for exams trying to access past papers from websites like A0A. It also rendered the intranet. developed by the school as a one stop revision too. redundant because resources took too long to download. 

Learning in a Safe Environment As an essential part of the school infrastructure it became clear that the wireless infrastructure and policies needed to be rethought and revamped. This provided the perfect opportunity to develop, roll out and enforce a BYOD policy which, amongst other things. which prohibited P2P sharing and downloading. "You can't underestimate the importance of rich and varied content in the learning landscape. Pupils are digital 

Challenges

The scope of the project is to develop a unified network solution for increasing the efficiency of the wired and wireless network of Chase Grammer School. New technology is needed to be implemented for the removal of the bottleneck condition of the wireless network of the organization is analysed for the development of the network plan. The selection of the technology is important for the management of the wireless connection and elimination of the network security risk associated with the development of the network.

The communication channel for the wired and wireless network can be divided for eliminating the data traffic congestion and multiple link should be used for connecting the network device such that the performance and uptime of the network can be improved. The requirement of the school and the users connected with the network is needed to be identified for aligning the network with the needs of the users. The network is designed for handling multimedia packets and allowing the users to connect multiple device with the wireless network.

Challenges

There are different challenges faced for the development of the network solution and they are categorized below:

Identification of data types and allocation of bandwidth – The type of data needed to be served should be identified and according to it bandwidth is needed to be allocated for the supporting the transmission of video, voice and text.

Identification of number of users and levels of priority – Priority of the administrator, staffs and the students are different and estimation of number of users connecting with the wireless access point is a difficult task. The network is designed by assuming the priority service and sufficient bandwidth is allocated such that the performance of the network is high.

Identification of transmission speed requirements – A transparency is needed to be maintained between the user and the network should operate quickly for reaching the destination address. The network is designed with an average throughput of 20 mbps for each of the user and for transmission of large files this can cause bottleneck.

User Centric Design Concept

The network solution is designed by keeping in mind the requirement of the user using the network and it is developed in multiple phases. An user centred evaluation is done for the improvement of the user experience and an iterative approach is used for the development of the network solution. The phases involved in the user centred design process are given below:

User Centric Design Concept

Specification of the context of use – Identification of the people using the network and the service and the condition and reason for using the network.

Specification of requirement – Identification of the requirement of the school, goals of the user that should meet for successfully develop the network.

Creation of design solution – Development of the network design in different phases and building a prototype of the solution before completion the deployment of the network.

Evaluation of design – Testing the usability of the network by performing different types of test on the prototype of the network.

Different types of software development lifecycle model can be selected for the development of the network and a project plan is needed to be created by determining the task needed to be performed for the development of the network.

Project hardware Requirement

The hardware that are required for the development of the network solution are given in the following table:

Types of cables

Name of the server

The following servers are used for the management of different operation and service and meet the needs of the users and are given below:

DHCP Server

• 5 Ghz CPU
• 8 Gb for 64 bit
• Windows Server 2016 x64
• Microsoft SQL Server 2016
• 1 Tb HDD

WEB Server

• 5 Ghz CPU
• 8 Gb Ram
• Windows server 2016 x64
• 1 TB hard Disk

Specification of the PC

• 5 Ghz dual core
• Windows 10 enterprise edition
• 4 Gb memory
• 500 Gb HDD

The main outcome of the project is to develop the network solution by eliminating the current problems faced by the users of chase grammar school. The are needed to be covered by the wireless network is needed to be identified for providing wireless service to more number of user and improvement of the network performance.

The network bandwidth is managed for increasing the efficiency of the network and two different subnets are created for the network for keeping the wired and the wireless network separated from each other. The department of the school is needed to be identified and the network is needed to be divided into multiple vlan for increasing the security of the network. The wireless access point installed in different location of the network is needed to be configured with security encryption algorithm for securing the access point form the external agents.

Limitations

There are different limitation for the development of he network and it is needed to be eliminated for increasing the performance of the network and improvement of the user experience. The area needed to be covered by the network should be identified for estimation of the number of wireless router needed to be installed for covering the workplace area.

The PCs connected in the local area network should be installed with antivirus software for detecting the malware, virus, trojan and the other threats such that it does not affect the network security and performance. For the wireless network the area of installation of the wireless router should be evaluated such that there is no obstruction or electrical source nearby that can affect the signal strength and quality. A proper cabling plan is also needed to be created such that it sufficient bandwidth is available to the user connected with the local area network for enabling them transmitting data packet between different source and destination address of the network.

Conclusion

From the above report it can be concluded that for the development of the network an analysis is needed to be made on the requirement of the user and identification of the task that is needed to be performed for the development of the network solution. Focus is given on the current challenges faced by the users for using the network and the technology that can be implemented for mitigating the problem is evaluated for its implementation in the current business process. An evaluation is made on the user centred design concept for aligning the network with the current needs for increasing the usability of the network. A prototype of the network is created in netsim and configured according to the requirement for the identification of the error and improvement of the performance of the network.

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