Network Design And Implementation For Color Ability Corporation’s New Office

Problem Statement

Quality network design together with powerful network devices can greatly benefit companies, organizations, and business by enhancing productivity and increasing the overall performance of the company (Bach, 2013). The choice of the kind of network topology to be used also affects network performance and reliability and thus the need to implement an appropriate topology to ensure high availability and reliability (Zhang and Shin, 2013, p. 431). Color Ability Corporation (CAC) is an advertising and marketing company that has experience growth and now their current operating space, Level 10 and 11 of X Tower in Brisbane CBD, is no longer enough.

Because of this, CAC has purchased a four-story building in one of the Brisbane Suburbs and plans to move there in the next three months. This report highlights the various activities that has to be carried out in regards to network design and implementation in the new building before they move. Of focus is the recommendation of various computer systems to be used by different employees in different departments, printers to be shared by employees and managers, network devices such as router, switch, and access points, internet, service provider, IP addressing, and the security benefits of using both public and private IP.  

Problem Statement

Color Ability Corporation wants to move to the new office in a four-story building located in one of the Brisbane suburbs. The company is task with the problem of first designing and implementing the network infrastructure before moving to the new building within the next three months.

Objectives

The following are the objectives that this project seeks to achieve:

• Propose network infrastructure that will enable all the employees both in Brisbane and Sydney to communicate.
• Propose computer systems for general use, film and graphic production, and server.
• Propose two kinds of printers to be used by employees and managers.
• Propose networking devices to be used to implement the network.
• Recommend ISP to be used by the company.

To ensure that the project is successful, it will be subdivided into different project activities that should be achieved within the given timeline (Bird and Harwood, 2010). The project will have several milestones including planning, designing, implementation, and testing. Documentation will be done throughout the project lifecycle.

Project Schedule

The network project is expected to be completed within three months. The table below shows the project schedule

Printing is necessary for CAC employees and managers. In the requirements, CAC needs two kinds of printers, one kind to be used by managers and should be located in all the managers offices in the five departments and another one for sharing by employees on every department. Due to high quality and heavy printing that is expected to be done by employees, Konica Minolta Bizhub C558 printer is recommended (Chapman, 2018). This is a multipurpose printer designed specifically to address the requirements of a contemporary business.

Konica Minolta Bizhub C558 printer is capable of dual scanning and improves the workflow. Additionally, it has a memory of 4GB and has capacity of 400 sheets (Oppenheimer, 2011). One key benefit is its high processing speed that ensures faster printing and minimize queue time. It also has the capability to staple up to 100-sheet booklet. It is relatively affordable compared to other printer models of the same capacity and has high performance and reliability.

For the managers, HP LaserJet Pro M281cdw is recommended. It is a colored printer that has the ability to copy, print, scan, and fax. It also supports wireless connection (CertificationKits, 2018).

Objectives

It supports double-sided printing and high quality and professional quality print. This printer will serve CAC managers well offering the best printing services.

Activity 3

Network performance greatly depends on the type and quality of networking devices. Good network infrastructure will increase the overall performance and productivity of the business (Levin, 2017). The following devices are recommended to be used by CAC:

Router

Cisco 4000 series router is recommended to be used for the CAC network. This is an intelligent router that is able to detect and filter any suspicious traffic and block them from getting into the internal network. This model supports virtualization to ensure that the network resources are available all the time at any place. Secondly, it has the ability to automate the network by using Cisco DNA center to enforce business policies to monitor and configure the network thus increasing work performance (Cisco, 2018).

Some of the network services that Cisco 4000 series offers include unified communication, intelligent caching, optimization of applications and WAN connection, and software-defined WAN. It has also been integrated with security features to protect the connections across the sites (Hohlfeld, Zinner, Benson and Hausheer, 2015, p. 4).

Switches

Cisco Meraki MS225-48 is the recommended switch to be used while setting up the network. It is a 48-port switch which has auto-MDIX crossover and supports 10/100/1000BASE T ethernet connection (Athow, 2018).

It supports power over ethernet in all the ports and applies 802.3af security standards. it supports remote management through Meraki dashboard which is user friendly and easy to use (Woodward and Feuer, 2013). Other features include client, DHCP, and hostname fingerprinting, remote diagnostics, notification alerts via email and SMS, failure detection, flexible stacking, ethernet switching capabilities, prioritization of quality of service, 2-factor authentication integration, enforcement of corporate wide password policy, role-based access control, STP enhancements, port security, and DHCP detection, snooping, and blocking (Cisco, 2018). This feature ensures high performance network through flow control support and switching capacity.

Wireless Access Point

Wireless access points facilitate wireless connection for employee devices such as mobile phones, laptops, and tablets (Wolf, 2010, p. 7). The best, affordable, and powerful access point that will be able to meet the set requirement is Cisco Business 100 series.

Installation and configuration of this WAP is easy because of the integrated setup wizard and intuitive web-based setup (Hoque and Gupta, 2012, p. 14). It further offers high-speed wireless connection with 802.11ac/n security standards which improves productivity and range. Also, it has advanced security features such as roque access point detection, WPA2, Radius secure authorization 802.1X. furthermore, it supports easy scalability and expandability and consumes less energy (Cisco, 2018).

Activity 4

Internet connection is very important to any business or company. The choice of the internet service provider will determine the overall network performance because of the internet speed (Karyakina and Melnikov, 2017, p. 253). The ISP should be able to assure high availability will minimal or no downtime. The table below shows a comparison of two local ISP that Color Ability Corporation can get internet connection from:

Project Schedule

Table 6: Local Internet Service Providers

Despite the high charges demanded by Foxtel, Vodafone still offer better and more reliable internet services. CAC will be able to enjoy premium internet speed at lower cost. Vodafone also offer 24/7 support to their customers. Moreover, Vodafone has a good reputation as compared to Foxtel (Weng, Yang and Lai, 2014, p. 679). As such, Color Ability Corporation should acquire its internet from Vodafone.

Activity 5

CAC employee expect some services to be offered internally. The table below describes some of the internal services that should be provided and supported by the network:

Internet service providers are often faced with shortages in public IP address. As such it will be difficult to cover the security needs of the Colour ability Corporation. Therefore, due to this limitation CAC will be forced to use private IP address within the local area network. Using private IP addresses only poses a big security risk to the company network and as such there is need to ensure that the private IP is not visible to the public users. This can be achieved by using network address translation (NAT) to convert the several pool of private IP addresses of the devices accessing the internet to a smaller pool of IP addresses that the internet service provider has been allocated. This ensures that the public have no access to the private IP.

Employing the use of both public and private IP in the company network will help enhance the network security by shielding the private IP access from the outside (Mercer, 2018). People will only see the public Ip when devices are connected to the internet and cannot use it to trace the private IP thus making the network more secure. This will help CAC maintain data security and ensure that they are not accessed by unauthorized users from external networks. Thus, CAC should use both private and public IPs in order to make the network more secure and prevent external attackers such as hackers from gaining access to the internal network.

By adopting the use of PAT and private IP addresses, accountability-which is one of the essential network security features is lost. This renders the network to be vulnerable to attacks from rogue users and make it nearly impossible to track the source of the attack. As such, by combining the use of both Public and private IP provide an excellent security solution for the company network.

In order to improve and enhance the network security, it is important to have a network security plan. Colour Ability Corporation should adopt the following three ways which are effective in improving the IP network security. They include: for the new network the company should implement a zones and conduits network infrastructure. Secondly, the services that are utilized by several computing devices should be moved to demilitarized zones. Finally, the most current best practices and IP standards should be used. By laying out this security plan, CAC will be able to improve the network security.

General Use Computer System

Budget Summary

Color Ability Corporation expects to grow within the next 10 years and as such, the proposed network design is flexible enough to allow for future expansion and scalability. The increasing network needs will be accommodated without affecting the overall network infrastructure and performance.  With the proposed design, the company will be able to extend the network easily in future if need be.

Recommendations and Conclusions

Based on the justifications provided, CAC should therefor adopt this proposal to design and implement network infrastructure for the new building. Network performance depends on the choice of network devices, cables, and choice of the internet service provider. These are the key determinants of network reliability, availability, scalability, expandability, and overall security. Based on these factors, the recommended devices and ISP will be able to ensure that such requirements are met.

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