Designing WAN Networks for Global Hospitals - IT Infrastructure Project

IT Infrastructure Project: Designing WAN Networks

Reference Figure 1.  Global Care Hospital is a network of four large hospitals in the U.S. You have recently purchased the organization, naming it.  Please refer to the hospital as “place your name here” Global Hospital.  

Figure 1. Global Hospital Network Design

Jane Doe Global Hospital owns a network of hospitals supported by four (4) office buildings. Their original design, depicted in Figure 1, was categorized as a medium-size network for 200 to 1,000 devices.  They have well surpassed this and added new services in telemedicine.  In addition, it has several flaws.  You, as their senior network engineer, are tasked with the job of a complete re-design.  This design must support a large-size network for over 1,000 devices, address the current design flaws per figure 1, and meet the future needs of a globally capable hospital IT infrastructure.  *Note, each of the office buildings in Figure 1 also contains additional routers, switches, workstations, and servers that would support a typical hospital office building of this hospital size.  Include these devices to meet the rubric requirements as you design the detailed version of this network. Regardless, only one workstation is needed per network switch to show working functionality. 

In this project, you will study performance improvements in a congested, wired WAN environment that can be solved to varying degrees by a new IT infrastructure design and fully functional implementation in Cisco Packet Tracer.  

Project Requirements

• Take screenshots demonstrating your network, servers, configurations, and protocols properly functioning in the new design.  Screenshots must include a unique piece of information identifying the student’s computer along with a proper operating system date/time.  Submit these as appendices in the Word document.
• Submit a working Packet Tracer lab, typically this file has a .pkt file extension.
  • This will include the fully operational new IT infrastructure design
  • All devices in the lab must be named with your first name and last name
    • Example: Jane_Doe_Router_1
  • All hardware and software should be configured properly and should be able to communicate securely using optimized networking designs, configurations, and protocols
• Packet Tracer IT Infrastructure Re-Design Requirements
  • You must start with a blank/new Packet Tracer file, existing labs or modified labs of existing solutions will receive a zero without exception
  • Include the existing hospital network design but optimized/improved
    • LANs must function using the OSPF protocol
    • Buildings 1 and 3 must connect to buildings 2 and 4 using a properly selected and configured WAN protocol
  • Design a large-size network for over 1,000+ devices
    • An appropriate WAN design supported by research is necessary
    • Add appropriate routers and switches to support this new design
    • Design and configure at least one appropriate networking protocol, IPv4 or IPv6
      • Design IP addressing that will scale to over 1,000 devices
      • Use proper network address translation (NAT)
    • Add appropriate security into the design, at least one (1) significant improvement
    • Add sufficient modularity, resiliency, and flexibility into the design, at least one significant improvement for eachfor a total of three (3) optimizations
    • Design and implement the following new services and systems
      • Assure each service supports telemedicine
      • A Healthcare Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system
        • Requires four front-end web servers
        • Requires load balancers that balance traffic to the front-end web servers
        • Requires two database servers
        • Requires a storage area network (SAN) to store all data
      • A website hosted on a web server in each ISP, accessible by all workstations
      • Two new user workstations in each buildingthat uses the new services and services properly
        • Show these services working on each workstation in your project (e.g. the Healthcare ERP, the websites in the ISPs)
      • Paper Requirements (Introduction, Literature Review, and Conclusion)
        • Submit a properly formatted APA paper in Microsoft Word
        • Here is an example paper: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/18/
        • Table of Contents that automatically adjusts page numbers of the main headings
        • Introduction
          • Introduce the primary goals and objectives of the project
          • Include morethan 5 scholarly sources and 500 words in the Introduction and Conclusion combined
        • Review of literature that supports the new system simulation, model, and design
          • Include appropriate IT frameworks and standards in which to design a large enterprise class IT infrastructure and network
          • Address system feasibility, RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability), security, and disaster recovery
          • Include at least 10 scholarly journal articles focusing on relevant research on the problems being addressed
          • Meets the length requirement of 1,000 words
        • Packet Tracer design explanation
          • Explain each of the additions and improvements
          • Reference the primary configurations and how these were developed
          • Include running configurations from routers/switches as appendices
        • Conclusion
          • Highlight any limitations, managerial implications, and conclusions of the project deliverables and outcomes
        • The assignment includes over 2,000 words of original student authorship that shows excellent mastery and knowledge of IT infrastructure design.There are also over 10 unique scholarly peer reviewed journal articles from well-respected IT journals included that directly relate to and sufficiently support the working designs and scenarios. 
        • Save the file as Lastname_Firstname_ProjectPhaseI. Include your name in the assignment file itself and submit your file to Blackboard.
        • Any assignment without working Packet Tracer files or without screenshots that do not include a visible date and timestamp from the operating system and a unique desktop element to identify the student’s work will not be accepted.
        • To copy screenshots to Microsoft Word:
          • Press the “Print Screen” key on your keyboard. The key is usually located at the upper right corner of a keyboard.
          • You can also use the “snipping tool” in Windows
          • For Windows users, open application “Paint” and paste the screen shot over. “Paint” usually can be accessed this way: Start àAll Programs à For users of other operating systems, use a similar application.
          • In “Paint”, select the graph or area needed and copy it. You need to click this icon in order to be able to select an area. The icon is listed on the left side of the window.
          • Paste the selected area to a word processor.
          • Save the file as Lastname_Firstname_ProjectPhaseI