Widget Company LAN

Network Design for Widget Company

Description

The network is divided into four major interfaces. The first one is the Extranet or the un-trusted zone. This is where the Internet is found. The second one is the DMZ or the demilitarized zone which is a buffer between the Extranet and Intranet. This is the place where servers are located such as Web, FTP, DNS and other common services. The third one is the Intranet or the trusted zone. This is where you find workstations in the company. It is the trusted zone, because the network and system administrator can control the privileges and connections in the network. The last interface is the Datanet Center or the Critical zone. It is critical because the foundation of the company's infrastrture is found over there. It is important to note that for the whole company, there are Wireless Access Points for the users to utilize.

Network Requirements

It is a defacto standard that a network must comprise of essential network devices that will help in the communication and information dissemination of data. Since the budget for network design is relatively big, we can implement all the best equipment in the industry. With the budget of more than $300,000, we can buy top of the line routers and switches which can be used for network deployment. Following the Cisco standard for network design, we shall have the following features that are compelled to us as network requirements:

Fault Tolerance

For the fault tolerance, we don't design network that just works. The main thing is that it should be fault tolerant. It answers the question of availability. In our network design, we ensured that the router is fault tolerant because it transports the data, whether it is being transported through intranet or extranet. That is the reason why we put at least two routers to support the availability. If one router goes down then it can still be operational for performing its normal tasks. Same is true for switches and servers. We ensured that there is a backup switch available so that the workstations and other devices will still be able to communicate either in Layer 2 (Data Link) or Layer 3 (Network).

Scalability

Our network design projected scalability in creating the LAN for the Gates Widget Company. We assumed that at least 10% of the total population increases every four months (quarterly). With this type of projection, the number of workstations get increased and it must be planned that it will be scalable. In our network design, we use the concept of VLANs or Virtual Local Area Networks in order to promote scalability among devices. The capacity and specifications of servers must be updated every year, in order to make it more reliable and capable of handling the increasing number of users. This will also help in aligning the current technologies with industry standards.

Quality of Service (QoS)

The QoS is also enforced and utilized in the LAN design. This will help in segregating that which part of the network should be given priority ...