Objectives

One of the fundamental parts of any business or organization is the computer network. A computer network is an interconnection of different computing devices such as computers laptops, routers, access points, servers, switches, and other components for the purpose of communication and sharing of resources such as data, applications, and files (Zhuravlev, 2016). Since the network is a critical business requirement of the business it is important to take extreme care while planning and implementing it to make sure that the business will be able to take advantage of the benefits that comes with proper network implementation. Salim and Abdala (2018) says that designing the network properly will increase employee efficiency and performance which is directly converted to increased productivity and revenue within the company. In their article, they further argue that any network should ensure that the following properties are met: scalability, security, reliability, easy management, effectiveness, and efficiency to ensure smooth running of the business operations.

Colour Ability Corporation (CAC) is an advertising and marketing company located in Brisbane CBD and have its operations based in X-Tower (level 10 and 11). The company has expanded and the current space does not meet the increasing needs of the business, therefore, the company has purchased a new 4-story building on one of the suburbs in Brisbane and is planning to move to the new building in three months. This paper will discuss the various components and infrastructure that needs to be set up in order to facilitate and implement a network infrastructure in the new building before CAC moves in.

The new building that the company has acquired has no network infrastructure and thus there is need to set up a network before the business moves in. CAC wants to move in in three months’ time and thus the network should be setup within this timeline.

This project seeks to accomplish the following objectives:

• Recommend computers for the different purposes within the company
• Recommend printers for individual managers and one to be share by the rest of the employees.
• Design a network that will facilitate employees to work remotely and share project files.
• Recommend network components that should be used while implementing the network infrastructure.
• Propose a local internet service provider that will provide reliable internet connection for the company.

This project will employ the waterfall methodology to where the project is broken down into different phases: requirements gathering and planning, designing, implementation, testing, documentation, and maintenance. In the requirements gathering and planning stage, the project team will be responsible for collecting all the business requirements of every department by using the different data collection techniques such as interviews and questionnaires. In the design phase, the project team will simulate the network design using the different network simulation tools such as GNS3 in order to have a bigger picture on how the various components will communicate. Implementation phase is where the logical design is converted to physical design and the actual network installation and configuration is done. Testing is done to make sure that all the business requirements and objectives have been captured. All the steps carried out from requirements gathering to network testing will be documented for future reference.

Methodology

The following tables give system specifications for the various departments within CAC. Table 1 gives system specifications for general use computers, table 2 provides specifications for graphics production, table 3 gives specifications for film production, and table 4 gives requirements for email/ftp server.

Being an advertising and marketing company, Colour Ability Corporation will be doing a lot of printing. As such, the need to have a printer that will be able to print professional, high-quality printouts.  The company requires two types of printers one for sharing and another type to be used by managers in their respective departments.

HP LaserJet Enterprise M553dn is the recommended printer for managers. This is because it is a small but very reliable and is lightweight to effectively handle the printing needs of the managers. Additionally, it has the capacity scan, print, and copy both sides of the printing paper. It is an energy efficient printer thus will not consume a lot of energy, high speed of printing, and is easy to manage. Furthermore, it facilitates printing even in sleep mode.

The managers require their own personal printers because they will be printing very sensitive information and thus this printer has the functionality to add secure printing ensures that managers are able to print their work securely.

Xerox Phaser 7400 DFX is the recommended printer to be used and shared by the CAC employees. This is a very powerful and reliable printer that will be able to handle the heavy printing require by the employees. It can hold up to 3000 sheets of printing papers, ability to print A3/4/5/6, and has a printing speed of up to 40ppm.

The printer has a sensor such that when the printing papers get exhausted in one trey it will automatically start using the papers in another trey. It has a processing speed of 800MHz, 8GB RAM, and 20GB hard disk volume.

Security, reliability, and performance of a network is dependent on the choice of network devices used. As such, it is essential for Colour Ability Corporation to make sure that the components used are capable of enforcing and maintaining these critical network attributes comments Lee (2014).

Switch: Cisco 200 series is the recommended switch to be used for setting up the network because it is reliable, affordable, and can be managed and administered remotely. Additionally, it ensures high availability and performance.

Cisco 200 series switch supports IPv6 and power over ethernet. According to Lin, Hamdi and Muppala (2012, p. 1188) this switch is easy to setup, manage, and is energy efficient. It supports PoE models to power up IP phones, cameras, and wireless access points.

System Specifications for the Various Departments

Router: Cisco 4000 series is the proposed router to be used by Colour Ability Corporation because of its ability to identify any malicious and suspicious traffic on the network and filter it to prevent it from getting into the network. Additionally, by using the Cisco DNA center, this router can automate the network to make sure that the network is configured and monitored to enhance network performance (Cisco 2018). Moreover, its virtualization feature makes sure that the network resources anytime when needed.

Advantages of this router model include application optimization, software-defined WAN, unified communication, WAN connection, and intelligent caching.  According to Hohlfeld, Zinner, Benson and Hausheer (2015) this router has advanced security feature to secure the network across and between the various business sites and branches.  

Wireless Access Point: Cisco 100 series wireless access point is the preferred wireless connection device because it is affordable, powerful, and is easy to configure and manage. Provide high-speed, reliable, and wider wireless connection, this device uses 802.11ac/n wireless standard. CAC requires wireless connection because it very essential and enables the workers to have access to the digital resources over the network using their portable devices like tables and laptops as stated by Gentile, Griffith and Souryal (2012, p. 52).

Some of the benefits associated with this device include advanced security features such as rogue access points detection, WPA2, an 802.1X radius authentication. It enables easy network scale up and expansion and consumes less energy. 

Internet is the backbone for any business to facilitate communication with consumers and remote access to network resources Karyakina and Melnikov, (2017, p. 254). Internet service provider (ISP) is a critical partner to any business, thus, it is crucial that the ISP selected be able to provide stable, reliable, and high-speed internet connection. It is necessary to compare all the local ISPs before making a choice. The table below compares two reliable ISPs in Brisbane:

Vodafone is the best choice because it offers stable, reliable, and high-speed internet connection. Additionally, it gives a 24/7 support to all its customers and allow them to enjoy internet services at a lower cost. Weng, Yang and Lai (2014, p. 678) have argue in their research found out that Vodafone has a good reputation and has receive praises from its existing customers.

Employees at Colour Ability Corporation expects certain services to be provided by the network. These services are described in the table below: The following are some of internal services provided by CAC:

Recommended Printers

Colour Ability Corporation has been provided with public IP address (194.32.9.0/28) and private IP (192.168.0.0/24) by the current ISP.

The security of the network is very crucial to any business. Many businesses and companies are now investing a lot of money and resources to enhance and improve the security of their network to ensure that the network resources are secured and safe from external attacks and any malicious programs from getting into the network. One technique of ensuring and enforcing network security is by employing the use of private and public IP addresses (Feuer, 2013). Combining the use of both IP addresses protect the company from external attacks by making the private IP addresses such that it is not visible to the public. The ISP assigns public IP addresses to the company and that is what is visible to the external users/ public.  However, the private IPs are assigned within the local area network, thus the external users will not be able to see the private IP (LI, 2012, p. 1373). Any suspicious programs or malicious traffic will not be able to find its way to the local area network and this strategy can be a great approach that Colour Ability Corporation can adopt.

Colour Ability Corporation expects its business to expand and grow over time, therefore, it is necessary to ensure that the network will support the increasing needs and the changing user demands. This dictates the network should be flexible and scalable in order to address these needs. Users or other network components and computing devices will be added to the network without affecting the overall performance, reliability, availability, and security of the network.

Conclusion

When selecting any computing or networking devices it is important to focus on the current and future needs of the users. This demand that the business carries a feasibility study and collect all the current and future requirements before recommending a device. In this project, requirements gathering process was conducted to ensure that the project will not only serve the current needs but also the future and emerging requirements. Reliability, security, availability, performance, and scalability are the key characteristics that any enterprise network should have. Network security is very important to any enterprise and that’s why they are investing heavily in it to ensure that their digital resources and sensitive data and information are protected from external attacks. Based on the finding and recommendations made in this document, Colour Ability Corporation should adopt this proposal.

Reference List

Cisco (2018). Best Small Business Routers – Cisco. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/small-business/routers.html [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

Cisco (2018). Cisco IT Best Practices. Cisco IP addressing Policy. [ebook] Cisco, pp.5-10. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ciscoitatwork/downloads/ciscoitatwork/pdf/Cisco_IT_IP_Addressing_Best_Practices.pdf [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

Cisco (2018). Cisco Small Business 300 Series Wireless Access Points. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/small-business-300-series-wireless-access-points/index.html [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

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