LAN Design for Kedleston University: Requirements and Details

About Kedleston University

Recognising that deadlines are an integral part of professional workplace practice, the University expects students to meet all deadlines for submission of assessments. However, the University acknowledges that there may be circumstances which prevent students from meeting deadlines. There are three distinct processes in place to assist with differing student circumstances:

1) Assessed Extended Deadline (AED): Students with disabilities or long-term health issues are entitled to a Support Plan.

2) Exceptional Extenuating Circumstances (EEC): The EEC policy applies to situations where serious, unforeseen circumstances prevent the student from completing the assignment on time or to the normal standard. The process is explained in Part I of the Academic Regulations.

3) Late Submission Request (LSR): The LSR policy applies to situations where serious but short duration circumstances prevent a student from submitting work by the required deadline. An LSR can authorise a maximum extension of up to of one week. The process is explained in Section F6 of the Academic Regulations

Links to request EEC or LSR are available for individual subjects through the tile one the Udo homepage. Requests for both EEC and LSR will require supporting documentary evidence.

In other circumstances, work submitted after the deadline but less than one calendar week late will be accepted for marking but subject to a mark capped at 40%.

Learning Outcomes are stated in the Module Specification. This assignment will assess the following outcomes:

1.Demonstrate the ability to select appropriate hardware and media types for a given specification.

2.Apply basic principles of network design for small campus networks for a given specification.

You are employed on minimum wage work for a Networking Consultancy who design and implement networks for multiple clients. Your department of the consultancy provides general design and layout services.

Your income is supplemented by a bonus that is paid on successful completion of the contract.

Installation of equipment cabinets, equipment, cabling and containment will be completed by an external contracting company who will install exactly to your instructions. They will charge for the work that you specify and will charge again if they must return to change anything that is incorrect, not clear, not achievable or incorrectly specified.

The configuration of the networking equipment will be conducted by a separate external contractor who provides Technical Configuration Services. They will configure the equipment that you specify and that has been installed by the contract installation company under your instructions. The Technical Services Contractor will charge based on their own experience of configuring the types of equipment that you have specified. They will make an additional charge if they must return to complete any work that you have not specified or if the equipment is not able to meet the functional requirements.

LAN Design Requirements

The bonus that you are allocated will be reduced by the same amount as the additional costs levied by the installation and configuration contractors that is incurred as a direct result of failings in your input to the project. Contract companies at this level will typically charge between £500 and £1000 per hour with a minimum charge of 4 hours.

Your conditions of employment:

You will need to complete the missing information in a report that supports the lead network engineers who are designing a local area network for the given scenario (please find more details in the case study section which you should read entirely). The Network Engineering Team have completed the majority of the work but require assistance with some of the detail and explanation.

Clarification: The scenario and organisation are totally fictitious and have no relationship to any organisation either past or present with the same or similar name. Do not waste time or effort attempting to identify any real organisation. For the introduction, use only the information that has been provided in this specification.

Case study - Local Area Network Design:

Compliance with Requirement

This document has been prepared on behalf of the Kedleston University. This is a new building without a previous network installed. The client has conducted an extensive internal review over a period of time and has defined their requirements. For the purpose of this design, the requirements are fixed and not negotiable however the client will consider any informed advice offered by the designers for incorporation into a revised specification. The fabric of the building layout cannot be changed.

The LAN will form a central part of the school’s Information Technology strategy for the next five to seven years and will provide the framework for future LAN developments.

The proposed solution should cover all of the points mentioned in this document and will consist of diagrams and tables with short descriptions of key points.

Each member of staff in the school will be allocated a desktop machine running Windows 10. You are not required to provide hardware or software specifications for the workstations as this will be undertaken by another company.

The network should allow lecturers login to the network with University provided laptops or mobile devices anytime and anywhere within the campus. Students will be allowed to use the wireless network to access publicly available content using their own laptop or other devices.  

The school currently consists of staff offices and 6 computing laboratories, the layouts of which are shown in this document, the layouts are not to scale. Each member of staff will require a network attached desktop workstation, this will be provided by the University IT team once the network installation is complete.

A number of network attached dedicated hardware servers will also be installed by the University IT team after the network installation. These will provide directory services, DHCP, DNS, Email, intranet, print services and database services. The software implementation of the servers and services is beyond the scope of report.

The network should provide flexible connectivity options throughout the site for a wide range of end systems including printers, host computers and fileservers. It should also be capable of supporting voice and video communications over the LAN. In addition to this flexibility, the LAN should be upgradeable to cater for more users, higher traffic loads and developing technology. The LAN should be resilient, secure and cost effective.

The staff will be sharing the same physical network infrastructure. The network will provide access to external email and the general Internet for every attached workstation.

Each department / functional area will be logically separated using IP subnets and some restrictions may be put in place to ensure that some departments have limited access to others. Configuration of these access restrictions is beyond the scope of this project and will be completed after the network handover. For the sake of clarity, logical separation means that each of the departments / functional areas has its own IP subnet.

General Staff

General staff are mainly lecturers and teaching assistants. The number of staff in each office is illustrated in the site layout. Each lecturer will have their own workstation with logical access to necessary servers including print servers. The General Staff network is logically separated from all other networks.

Administrative staff

The admin team provides support to the lecturers and students. They also have a workstation with logical access to necessary services including file and print. The Administrative Staff network is logically separated from all other networks.