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Empowering Business Connectivity: Network Upgrade Proposal

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TABLE OF CONTENTS  

  1. Overview 

1.1 Our Introduction 

1.2 Organization Layout 

1.2.1 Departments in LAUFS Holdings 

1.3 Current Situation 

1.4 Project Objectives 

1.5 Projected Benefits 

1.6 Project Proposal 

  1. Design of Solution 

2.1 Network Analysis 

2.2 Network Topologies 

2.2.1 Physical Topology 

2.2.2 Logical Topology 

  1. Network Diagrams 

3.1 Cabling Diagram  

3.2 Server Rack Diagram  

  1. Network Security 

4.1 Firewall Installation 

4.2 Antivirus Installation 

  1. Protocols Used in the Network 

5.1 All Protocol used in the Network 

  1. IP Address & VLAN Table 

6.1 IP Address & VLAN Table 

  1. ISP Connections & Bandwidth Calculation 

7.1 ISP Connections 

7.2 Bandwidth Calculation 

  1. Implementation 

9.1 Implementation Plan 

  1. Appendices 

10.1 Exhibit A: Team Contract 

  1. References 

OVERVIEW 

OUR INTRODUCTION 

We are NextGen Solutions and we have a very high reputation in the Network Design field. We are providing full managed IT services. Data center services and support to medium size institutions. We do this by establishing long-term partnership with our clients and help them grow and maintain their businesses. We are dedicated to maintaining open communications and providing quality customer services.  

ORGANIZATION LAYOUT 

LAUFGFS Holding is medium-sized company located in Sri Lanka, with approximately 600 staff members. The company is interested in updating its network system in its building. The building has five floors with wiring closets per floor. The company is interested to expand its number of departments and staff members. Due to population growth in building, company plans to enlarge its network. Management is tired of network downtime and slowness affecting accessing internet and files in server. The staff members have frequently complained about slow response times. There appears to be severe congestion of the LAN, especially at peak hours. The company would like to upgrade the LAN infrastructure to provide sufficient bandwidth to employees. The applications that the organization is currently running include standard office applications, plus some VPN software.  

Network manageability is important because the employees in LAUFGFS Holding needs to access network resources quickly. The company’s upgrade timeframe is 1 to 3 months. 

Departments in LAUGFS Headquarters Building. 

  • Ground Floor 
  • Floor: 1 
    Accounting 
    Sales 
    Finance 
  • Floor: 2 
    Human Resource. 
    Marketing 
    Research and Development 
  • Floor: 3 
    Production 
    Engineering 
  • Floor: 4 
    Administration 
  • Floor: 5 
    IT (Operations & Maintenance) 

Number of Users in Each Department 

Wired Connection users 

Floor Department Users 
Ground Reception & Customer Area 10 
1 Accounting 60 
Sales 35 
Finance 50 
2 Human Resource 70 
Marketing 70 
Research and Development 50 
3 Engineering 40 
Production 40 
4 Administration 70 
5 IT (Operations &Maintenance). 50 
Total Users 545 
Floor Users 
Ground Floor 150 
Floor: 1 100 
Floor: 2 120 
Floor: 3 100 
Floor: 4 100 
Floor: 5 100 
Total 670 

Wireless Connection Users 

Devices in Entire Network. 

Description Computers IP Cameras Access Points Printers 
Ground Floor 10 10 4 1 
Accounting 60 6 6 4 
Sales 35 
Finance 50 
H.R.M. 70 6 5 4 
Marketing 70 
Research and Development 50 
Production 40 6 5 3 
Engineering 40 
IT (Operations & Maintenance). 70 4 5 1 
Administration 50 5 4 3 
Total  37 29 16 

CURRENT SITUATION 

The current network uses inexpensive switches from several vendors, purchased over time. They comply with various standards, depending on when they were purchased. 

Specifically, the network is configured as follows: 

  • Three hundred workstations are connected to two shared servers that run Solaris.  
  • No Wi-Fi connection to company employees. 
  • One hundred workstations in administrative and accounting floors and are used to view and update user records, submit accounting information, and so on.  
  • Eighty workstations are used in second floor to connect with other branches and for data access in real time. The remaining workstations are used by employees. 
  • The clients are connected in a mostly switched, star-wired bus network using Ethernet 100Base-T technology. In the few instances where switches are not used, hubs serve smaller workgroups of administrative and accounting staff. 
  • The WAN uses 16Mbps links to access internet. The one router uses static routing that was configured by a previous network designer. 
  • A firewall used in the current network is not suitable for nowadays data filtering. 

PROJECT OBJECTIVES 

The major objective of this project is to upgrade the network of LAUFGFS Holding in order to:  

  • Provide more than adequate bandwidth between the remote branches and headquarters 
  • Improve and consolidate network performance at company. 
  • Provide increased network capacity 
  • Provide future expansion capability. 
  • Implement WLAN for company employees.  
  • Improve the network’s fault tolerance, security, and high speed connection, which will increase the efficiency of day-to-day operations in the company by making access time quicker. 
  • Identify the critical points of failure in the existing network and propose on how to eliminate them. 

PROJECTED BENEFITS 

Improved network reliability, security, and fault tolerance. Critical points of failure will be identified and redundancy will be implemented to provide fault tolerance. This will save a great deal of money lost from a network failure– a single failure would likely cost at least $10,000. Additionally, a breach in security could potentially cost millions in lawsuits. 

Improved network scalability – an estimated savings in upgrade costs and hardware purchase cost of $300,000 over the next 10 years. The hardware purchased with this proposed upgrade will facilitate incremental expansion of the network. It will also help reduce the costs of the next upgrade several years in the future. 

Improved network speed and capacity – Company will be able to process more records and accomplish more work with large number of staff members. Much less time will be spent waiting on the network. 

PROJECT PROPOSAL 

The following are the major design areas to be addressed: 

  • Identify the relevant network applications, their logical connectivity requirements, and the services required. 
  • Redesign the LAUGFS Holdings LAN: The entire network needs to be redesigned because there is no redundancy. Included in there design fix the placement of the servers that will be implemented and the identification of the single point’s failure in order to find solutions to eliminate them. 
  • Upgrade the WAN links: The upgrade of the WAN links is essential because, according to the company, the current bandwidth seems insufficient. The WAN uses 16Mbps links to access internet. 
  • Isolated VLAN for each department: The company departments need to have an isolated VLAN in order to prevent unauthorized data access by users from the main server. 
  • Firewall: There should be a Powerful firewall in between the router and the ISP to prevent unauthorized access from outside. 

2. DESIGN OF SOLUTION 

2.1 NETWORK ANALYSIS 

In the preceding section, the team presented the existing network diagram of LAUGFS Holdings. In this diagram, the team had identified critical points of failure.  

Please see the Table 1- Suggestion How to Eliminate Them. 

Table 1- Suggestion How to Eliminate Them 

CRITICAL POINTS OF FAILURE SUGGESTION ON HOW TO ELIMINATE THEM 
Single link to a local ISP There would be two leased lines from different providers bundled together for ease of use by a router using FHRP or a similar protocol. The link to the ISP should have a backup mechanism, an arrangement with the ISP to have a second dedicated line available for emergencies. 
Accessing files in shared folder. Isolated VLAN can also be implemented on this in order to prevent the staff from accessing the files in shared folder. 
Main router failure. There would be two routers connected to different ISPs. 

2.2 NETWORK TOPOLOGIES 

2.2.1 PHYSICAL TOPOLOGY 

In this section, the physical topology demonstrates the direction of the physical design implementation and illustrates the major points of the network upgrade, which includes the devices, locations, and cable installation. 

The physical design has the following features: 

  • The building is equipped with Category 5e cabling and wall plates in the offices, meeting rooms, and so on. 
  • Within the building, managed switches are used. Managed switches give more control over LAN traffic and offer advanced features to control that traffic. It provides the ability to configure, manage, and monitor LAN and this gives greater control over how data travels over the network and who has access to it.  
  • The ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. These are companies that provide access to the Internet. 
  • The firewall is a device designed to permit or deny network transmissions based upon a set of rules and is frequently used to protect networks from unauthorized access while permitting legitimate communications to pass. 

2.2.2 LOGICAL TOPOLOGY 

The Logical design describes the following features: 

  • Company Infrastructure 

The Company Network Infrastructure includes three layers: 

Collapsed Core layer 

A core is called collapsed when you move the role of the core switches to the distribution switches, merging the core- and distribution layer. This Includes high end layer 3 switches and its allows flexibility in network design.  Also this layer devices facilitates ease of implementation and troubleshooting the network compared with separate Distribution and Core layer networks and reduces the network design cost from buying additional switches. 

Access Layer 

The Access layer, located within a company building, aggregates end users from different workgroups and provides uplinks to the Building collapsed core layer. This contains all the devices to allow authorized users in the building to access the network. This includes end-user devices, such as workstations, etc., as well as devices to interconnect the end users to the services they require. This layer is responsible for ensuring that only users who are authorized to access the network are admitted. This layer provides important services, such as broadcast suppression, protocol filtering, network access, IP multicast, and QoS 

3. NETWORK DIAGRAMS 

3.1 CABLING DIAGRAM 

3.2 Server Rack Diagram ( 36U Rack )  

4. NETWORK SECURITY 

4.1 Firewall Installation 

We are planning to implement SOPHOS XG firewall with high performance with high security. Because we need to monitor incoming and outgoing network traffic whether to allow or block specific traffic based on a defined set of security rules. And we are using two separate firewalls because if in case any firewall is down we need to rectify the data traffic from the proper way without any unauthorized access.  

We can find out below mention some features (advantages) from firewall: 

  • Web traffic filtering 
  • Intrusion Prevention  
  • Application control (Mobile Apps) 
  • Load balancing 

4.2 Antivirus Installation 

To protect the end devices from viruses we are proposing to install an Antivirus software for each device are under organization to protect their organization data and polices.  

5. PROTOCOLS USED IN THE NETWORK 

Protocol Description 
DHCP  Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network protocol that enables a server to automatically assign an IP address to a computer from a defined range of numbers. 
FTP The File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used for the transfer of computer files between a client and server on a computer network. FileZilla is a free software, cross-platform FTP application, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. 
DNS A DNS server is a type of name server that manages, maintains and processes Internet domain names and their associated records 
RSTP Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) is a network protocol that ensures a loop-free topology for Ethernet networks. Nowadays it is a popular solution to implement redundant networks. 
SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks. 
HSRP Hot Standby Router Protocol is a Cisco proprietary redundancy protocol for establishing a fault-tolerant default gateway. 
NTP The Network Time Protocol is a networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. 
VTP VLAN Trunking Protocol is a Cisco proprietary protocol that propagates the definition of Virtual Local Area Networks on the whole local area network. 
PAgP Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) is a Cisco Systems proprietary networking protocol, which is used for the automated, logical aggregation of Ethernet switch ports, known as an EtherChannel 
CAPWAP The Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points protocol is a standard, interoperable networking protocol that enables a central wireless LAN Access Controller to manage a collection of Wireless Termination Points, more commonly known as wireless access points. 

6. IP ADDRESS & VLAN TABLE 

Reserved IP Block: 172.16.0.0/16 

Wired Network 

VLAN Subnet Description IPs 
100 172.16.8.224/28 Reception & Customer Area 10 
101 172.16.5.0/25 Administration 70 
102 172.16.6.128/26 Accounting 60 
103 172.16.8.128/26 Sales 35 
104 172.16.6.192/26 Finance 50 
105 172.16.5.128/25 H.R. 70 
106 172.16.6.0/25 Marketing 70 
107 172.16.7.0/26 Research and Development 50 
108 172.16.7.192/26 Production 40 
109 172.16.8.0/26 Engineering 40 
110 172.16.7.64/26 IT (Operations & Maintenance). 50 
111 172.16.8.64/26 IP Cameras 37 
112 172.16.8.192/27 IP Printers 16 
113 172.16.4.128/25 Other Devices (Servers, APs, WLCs) 80 
114 172.16.7.128/26 Additional Subnet for Device Testing 50 
 658 

Wireless Network 

VLAN Subnet Description Clients 
200 172.16.0.0/22 Employee Network 670 
201 172.16.4.0/25 Guest Network 100 
 770 

Total IP Addresses = Wireless Network + Wired Network 

     = 770 + 658 

= 1428 

7. ISP CONNECTIONS & BANDWIDTH CALCULATION 

7.1 ISP Connections 

For this company, We’re going to buy Primary ISP as Sri Lanka Telecom and Secondary as Dialog. In case of primary ISP fails then quickly up the secondary connection without any failure. We are going to implement following fiber lines for the ISP connections.  

  • 100 Mbps fiber connection (From SLT Connection). 
  • 100 Mbps fiber connection (From Dialog Connection).  

7.2 Bandwidth Calculation 

We have assumed the following bandwidth limits for the users categorized.’ 

• Light users – 512 kbps (Guest Users in waiting area) 

• Moderate users – 1 Mbps (Normal Employees) 

• Heavy users – 2 Mbps (Company Managers) 

Floor Department Wired Users Usage Peak Bandwidth 
Ground Reception & Customer Area 10 512 kbps 5 Mbps 
1 Accounting 60 1 Mbps 60 Mbps 
Sales 35 1 Mbps 35 Mbps 
Finance 50 1 Mbps 50 Mbps 
2 Human Resource 70 1 Mbps 70 Mbps 
Marketing 70 1 Mbps 70 Mbps 
Research and Development 50 1 Mbps 50 Mbps 
3 Engineering 40 1 Mbps 40 Mbps 
Production 40 1 Mbps 40 Mbps 
4 Administration 70 2 Mbps 70 Mbps 
5 IT (Operations &Maintenance). 50 2 Mbps 50 Mbps 

Total Peak Bandwidth is 540 Mbps. We can assume that all users are not using internet simultaneously at full speed. Therefore, the normal bandwidth is lower that peak value. 

Connection Cost per Month 

ISP  Package Total Monthly Usage Cost per Month 
SLT 100 Mbps Fiber Line 1700 GB Rs. 33000.00 
Dialog 100 Mbps Fiber Line   
Total Cost   

IMPLEMENTATION 

After all details are finalized and upgrade design strategy complete, the implementation of the network upgrade will transpire with minimal or no downtime within Company. As part of our implementation plan, an initial network test will occur. This will be done during off-hours to minimize possible problems; however, the final test will be done during normal business hours to completely evaluate the network upgrade performance. The following items below will be completely under evaluation: 

  • Implementing the network with key business and technical goals. 
  • Validate LAN and WAN technology and device selections. 
  • Verify the service provider provides the agreed-upon service. 
  • Identify any bottlenecks or connectivity problems. 
  • Test the redundancy of the network. 
  • Analyze the effects on performance during network link failures. 

APPENDICES 

EXHIBIT A: TEAM CONTRACT 

Code of Conduct: As a project team, we will: 

  • Work proactively, anticipating potential problems and working to prevent them. 
  • Keep other team members informed of information related to the project. 
  • Focus on what is best for the project team 

Participation: We will: 

  • Be honest and open during all project activities 
  • Encourage diversity in team work 
  • Provide the opportunity for equal participation. 
  • Be open to new approaches and consider new ideas. 
  • Let the project manager know well in advance if a team member has to miss a meeting or may have trouble meeting for a given task. 

Problem Solving: We Will: 

  • Encourage everyone to participate problem solving problems. 
  • Only use constructive criticism and focus on solving problems, not blaming people. 

Meeting Guidelines: We Will: 

  • Plan to have an online meeting once a week before submission of the Part Project. 

REFERENCES 

  • Fitzgerald, J., & Dennis, A. (2009). Business Data Communications and Networking (10th Ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley& Sons, Inc. 
     
  • Oppenheimer, P. (2010). Top-Down Network Design: A systems analysis approach to enterprise network design (3rd Ed.).Indianapolis, IN: Cisco Press. 
     
  • Dean, T. (2010). Network+ Guide to Networks (5th Ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. 
     
  • Diane, T. (2008). Authorized Self-Study Guide Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (DESGN) (2nd Ed.).Indianapolis, IN: Cisco Press. 
     
  • Teare, D., & Pacquet, C. (2005). Campus Network Design Fundamentals. Indianapolis, IN: Cisco Press. 
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