Office Overview
This is a report about the Arr company which has a total of six offices which are located in Melbourne town and the surrounding suburbs, this company management had decided to install a network that will cover the six offices and enable the communication internally and externally where the users will be able to share files, send some e-mails, access internet and use the network intranet.
However in each office there are servers and internet access devices to enable internet access, however the head office is located in Melbourne city within a story building where it occupies the top three floors for various office departments including general department with on first floor with 32 workstations, the marketing department in second floor with 20 workstations and marketing department in the third floor with 38 workstations.
Therefore the main aim of this report is to design the companies wide area network, design head office local area network, determination of the wiring connection types to be used in head office , to determine the local area network topologies and protocols and drawing of the head office floor plans.
The figure above shows the infrastructural design of the Arr company wide area network where the six offices are connected to their respective local area networks which are made of star network, in the respective local area networks there are local servers for storing the office information which can be accesses by the office staffs in the office or outside the office for the file sharing purposes [5].
However the office networks are locally connected using the switch devices that connects together the end devices like the computers and the servers the switch also connects the local end devices to the network router. The routers in the individual offices are then used to link to the other routers in the other offices to make the wide area network [4].
In the head office there is the internet access point which supplies the internet to the entire wide area network through the internet service providers, however in the head office the general department is the one responsible to maintain or offer support to the entire wide area network and therefore the e-mail server is located there.
The above figure shows the head office local area network where the various network devices used are indicated, the network has a wireless router that is used to connect the network to the internet services providers ,however there is another router that is used to connect the office local area network to other office networks, the hub device in the network is used to connect the departmental network sections to the LAN router, the switches are then used in the network to interconnect the end network devices together and then to the network hub.
Wide Area Network Design
In this network the email server is connected in the general department where there is the IT administrator and it is used to send the emails to the various offices, more over the office server is the head office file server that stores and enables sharing of the stored files between the various company’s offices.
In the ARR head office network the network wiring require to be done in order to interconnect the various network devices, therefore various wiring items will be required which includes the following.
Registered Jack 45 (RJ45)
This is wiring item that is used to connect the untwisted pair cable to the end network devices and the network sockets [3].
Clipping tool.
This is the network wiring item that is used to clip together the RJ45 with the Ethernet cable to enable them to be connected to the network sockets and end devices.
Category 6 Ethernet cable
The cat6 cable is the most recommended wiring media that will be used to connect the network devices and the end network devices ,however the cat 6 cables had been selected since they supports high data transmission speed and will be efficient in the file transfer and sending of emails between the office staffs [6].
Below are some of the reasons of selecting the cat 6 cable as the wiring media.
- Provides high data transmission speed of 1000mbps at 250 MHz bandwidth.
- It is a standardized type of cable to do the LAN connections.
- It high reduces the power losses since it require little energy to transmit data.
- It is easy to upgrade to higher media since it supports the gigabits speed.
- It has the backwards compatibility since it can be connected to cat5 port and function effectively.
- It supports very fast networks performance and is able to even deliver the gigabits speeds.
In the ARR company head office local area network there are various services that are required to be implemented and they will be using different network protocols, however the network devices are connected to each using various topologies in the departmental level and in the entire head office LAN as discussed below.
In the head office there are two major topologies which include:
Star topology.
The star topology is used in the three departmental network sections where the network end devices are connected together at one point using the network switch.
Hybrid topology
After all the departments are connected in a star topology then the three departments star topologies are linked together using a network hub device and as a result a hybrid network is formed.
In this head office local area network there are various services that are required which includes the file sharing, sending e-mails and access to the internet services , therefore the below protocols will be applied.
Internet message access protocol (IMAP).
This protocol will enable the office staffs clients computers to access the email from the network web server conveniently.
File transfer protocol.
This is a standardized network protocol that mainly transfers files stored in the departmental servers to the staff’s client computers and this is enabled by the separated controls and data connections between the client’s computers and servers [2].
- Internet protocol.
This is another protocol that is used in relaying of the network data packets across the network sections however it has the routing functionality which enables the internetworking and establishment of the internet services in the head office network.
General department floor plan
Marketing department floor plan
Sales department floor plan
In this report the ARR network design was done where various activities were involved ,basically the ARR company network covers six offices networks which were located in the Melbourne and the neighboring suburbs ,the report had covered the designing of the company’s wide area network that covers the six offices , the designing of the head office local area network , the drawing of the various floor plans in the head office network departments, the identification of the network topologies and the protocols to be used in the head office to enable the e-mail service, internet/intranet access services, and file sharing services and the identification of the type of the wiring that is most appropriate for head office local area network.
The management proposed this network in order to enable the communication within and outside the offices, sharing of files, and enabling the intranet and internet services access to all staffs, therefore all those requirements will be achieved through the implementation of the proposed network.
References
[1] A.Behrouz,Data Communication and Networking,3rd edn. New York:McGraw-Hill Education, 2016.
[2] C.Tom,IPv6 Address Planning: Designing an Address Plan for the Future ,1st edn.San Francisco: O’Reilly Media,2015.
[3] C.Douglas, Internetworking with TCP/IP, Volume 1,1st edn.California:Addison-Wesley Professional,2017.
[4] I.Forouzan, Computer Networks: A Top – Down Approach,1st edn. New York: McGraw-Hill,2014 .
[5] S.Andrew,Computer Networks,2nd edn. New York: Prentice Hall,2015.
[6] S.William, Data and Computer Communication,4th edn. New Delhi:Tata McGraw Hill,2014.
