Network Infrastructure Design For Color Ability Corporation

Computer System Recommendations

Every business requires a platform that will enable it to communicate and share resources. Having a good network design and infrastructure will enable the company to meet these objectives. A network increases company productivity by enhancing business processes though automation and resource sharing (Pop, 2012). Over the year, network technology has evolved to meet the ever-changing business operations that are become complex every day. In today’s world, businesses are more focused on the security and efficiency of their network to ensure that sensitive resources such as data are protected from external or internal unauthorized access (Rodno, 2017).

Color Ability Corporation is a marketing and advertising company that is based in Tower X, occupying the levels 10 and 11. The company has grown and has expanded its operations to Sydney. Additionally, the company has bought a four-story building in one of the Brisbane suburbs in order to meet the company growth that the business is experiencing. Before CAC moving to the new building, it has decided that it is necessary to ensure the network infrastructure has been laid out. The company wants to move in three months and as such it is important that networking project in the new building is finished within the three months. The report will focus on suggesting computer system (for general use, graphic production, film production, and FTP/Mail server), recommend printer to be used by managers and another type to be share among the employees, recommend the various networking devices that will be used, IP addressing, and recommend a reliable local internet service provider.

CAC want to ensure that the new building that it has acquire has been networked. The project has to be completed within three months and it the network should be able to allow employee to communicate and share resources such as printers, allow managers to communicate and share project files securely, ensure that wireless connection is available in the five departments, and have access to the company network while working in different sites.

Color Ability Corporation has set out the following objectives:

• Configure a network that ensure secure centralized access to project files
• The network should enable employees to have access to the work emails regardless of their location
• The network should facilitate resource sharing such as printers and scanners
• Recommend a reliable local internet service provider
• Recommend a printer

The project will employ the waterfall methodology to meet the set objectives (Oppenheimer, 2011). First the project team will carry out requirement collections from the various departments that will occupy the new building and plan how to meet these requirements. Secondly, team will come up with a logical design of the network to see if it is feasible. Thirdly, convert the logical into physical design where the actual implementation of the network design is done. Fourthly, after network configuration has been completed it is tested to ensure it is working as expected (Wickboldt, et al., 2015, p. 284). Documentation of all these stages will be done from when the project was initiated.  

Printer Recommendations

Table 1: Project Timetable

Table 2: General use computer

(Source: Athow, 2018)

Table 3: Graphics Production

(sources: Matthew, 2018)

Table 4: Film Production

(Sources: Levin, 2017)

Table 5: Mail/FTP Server

CAC requires two kinds of printers, one to be used by every manager and another one to be shared among the employees. CAC being a marketing and advertising company =, printing will be one of the major services that should be available.

Kyocera FS-1220MFP is the recommended printer to be used by the managers. It is an A4 multicolored laser printer with a print speed of up to 20ppm with a maximum duty cycle of 20000 pages a month. It has a paper capacity of 250 sheets. It is also affordable and reliable and will be able to meet all the printing, copying, and scanning needs of the managers. It has a processing speed of 390MHz and memory of 64MB (Kyocera, 2018).

Lexmark CX725dthe is the recommended printer to be shared by employees in the five departments. It is a colored multifunctional laser printer with 25ppm print speed, paper capacity of 2300 sheets, and a maximum duty cycle of 7000 pages per month. This printer produces professional and high-quality documents. Other advanced features that are offered by this printer include paper-level recovery and high processing speed. This printer has a RAM capacity of 4 GB and 1.2GHz processing speed (Lexmark, 2018)

Network performance, reliability, and security depends on the networking devices used. CAC requires affordable but reliable networking devices to ensure network security and availability of resources such as project files, data, and applications (Lee, 2014).  The following devices are recommended to be used in the CAC network:

Switch

The recommended switch model to be used in setting up the network is the Cisco 200 series switches. This is an affordable switch with essential network properties such a high level of reliability and performance which is essential features of a good network. Additionally, it is easy to use and support remote administration and management.

CAC will be able to enjoy quality of services, IPv6 support, and security features supported by this Cisco 200 series. Additionally. it has several models of power over ethernet to power up cameras, IP phones, and wireless access points, is energy efficient, and is easy to setup and manage (Lin, Hamdi and Muppala, 2012, p. 1189).

The router is a very essential device in a network because it connects the company network to other external network and thus, it is important to choose a router with high security features, performance and reliability (Zhang and Shin, 2013). Cisco RV series router is recommended to be used because it offers access to highly secured network. Additionally, it provides virtual private network to enable employees to work remotely and access the network through internet pathway that is secure.

Recommended Networking Devices

This router is easy to setup and manage, advanced encryption, in-built firewall, and authentication features to protect the network from external threats while keeping the company digital resources safe.

Wireless connection is very essential to any company or business. This is because it allows the employees and guests to have access to the internet using their phones, tablets, and laptops. Sometimes employees would want to make presentation using tablets or laptops and wireless connection will be able to enable them connect to the network and access the necessary resources or files (Gentile, Griffith and Souryal, 2012, p. 51).

Cisco 100 series wireless access point is the best choice for CAC. This is because it is powerful, affordable, and easy to install and manage. It employs the use of 802.11ac/n standard to offer wider coverage and high-speed wireless connectivity.

Additionally, it offers advance security features including WPA2, detection of roque access points, and secure 802.1X radius authorization. Moreover, it provides easy expansion and scaling the network and is energy efficient (Cisco, 2018).

Internet connection is very critical to any business especially a company that interacts directly with customers such as Color Ability corporation (Allena, 2018). Internet connectivity is provided by internet service providers (ISP). Additionally, the ISP offers personal websites and email accounts. ISP provides internet connection through different forms such as DSL and should be reliable and assure high availability. Because of the increasing need, CAC requires a company that will be able t support high speed connectivity so as to allow employees working remotely to upload and download large files (between 5GB and 20 GB) within a short period of time. Therefore, when selecting an ISP, it is important to focus on speed, availability, security, and reliability features of its services (Karyakina and Melnikov, 2017). The table below give a comparison of three local ISP in Australia.

Table 6: Comparison of Internet Service Providers in Australia

(Source: Whistleout.com.au., 2018)

CAC should acquire its internet services form TPG. This is because it offers a reliable, high-speed internet connection. Additionally, TPG does not require any upfront subscription fee.

Employees expect certain services to be offered by CAC network. These services are crucial for the overall productivity of the company and they improved employee performance. They include mail services to facilitate email communication, print services to facilitate printing jobs, DHCP for dynamic allocation of IP addresses, Application services to allow employees to access shared application from anywhere even when working remotely, and file storage services to allow employees to store project files and other company files. The table below shows the various services and the device providing the service:

Internet Service Provider Recommendations

Table 7: Internal Services Provided

Table 8: Subnet Table

Table 9: IP Addressing Table

With the increasing threats and attacks facing company networks, security of the network has become critical. Companies and organizations are looking into different network security options and one of them is combining the use of both public and private IP addresses in the addressing scheme (Certkiller, 2018). Public IP allows anybody to access your computer from another device anywhere around the word. But to prevent attackers from accessing the internal network resources it is important to employ the use of private IP addresses. Private IP addresses are those addresses assigned to device within a company LAN and it through this IP that the devices can access the network resources. By using both IP addresses in the network makes the network more secure because it makes it difficult or almost impossible for the attackers to identify the private IP; they can only access public IP.

Additionally, private IP prevent attackers from determining the location of the devices. CAC will benefit a great deal from employing this security technique to secure it network. When a computer connected to CAC’s network accesses the internet; first the DHCP allocates it a private IP addresses in order for it to be identified locally by other devices on the network. Once it connects to the internet, it is assigned public IP that identifies the computer on the internet and allows it to communicate with other devices over the internet (LI, 2012). Public IP allows the computer to access external resources outside the local network but additionally protects the private IP allocated to the computer so as to ensure that no external attacks such as hackers, viruses, and other malicious programs do not get in to the local network. Privacy, confidentiality, security, and availability are the major properties that every network should have (Gagliardi and Alhabib, 2015). Using both private and public IP addresses will not only secure the network but also maintains its integrity.

Table 10: Project Estimated Budget

As the company grows, it is expected that more devices will be added to the network. The current proposed network to be implemented for CAC new offices allows for expansion and scalability of the network. This means that more devices and users will be added to the network without affecting the network performance, overall functionality, and infrastructure.

Conclusion

Network infrastructure is a very critical company asset and should be protected and maintained at all time to ensure that its performance, reliability, and productivity are maintained. The kind of devices used in the network and the internet service provider chosen are the key determinants of the overall network performance and productivity. Therefore, it is important to ensure that when selecting them, focus on performance, reliability, speed, and availability. The network design, devices, ISP, printer, and computer systems are the best, affordable, and reliable thus they will be able to meet the objectives of CAC. Security of the network is another aspect that every enterprise should invest in. This is to ensure that sensitive, private, and confidential resources are kept secured and no unauthorized access can access them. As such, it is recommended that CAC adopts this proposal because it is able to meet the objective within the timeline and budget.

Conclusion

Reference List

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Athow, D. (2018). The best business computers of 2018. [online] TechRadar. Available at: https://www.techradar.com/news/best-business-desktop-pcs [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Certkiller, I. (2018). Why private and public IP addresses for IPv4 addressing is necessary. [online] Certkiller.com. Available at: https://www.certkiller.com/guide-why-private-and-public-ip-addresses-for-ipv4-addressing-is-necessary.htm [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Cisco, C. (2018). Cisco Small Business 100 Series Unmanaged Switches. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/small-business-100-series-unmanaged-switches/index.html [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Cisco, C. (2018). Cisco Small Business 200 Series Smart Switches. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/small-business-200-series-smart-switches/index.html#~stickynav=5 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Cisco, C. (2018). Routers. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/index.html [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Feuer, M. (2013). Benefits and Requirements of Flexible-Grid ROADMs and Networks [Invited]. Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, 5(10), p.A19.

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Gentile, C., Griffith, D. and Souryal, M. (2012). Wireless network deployment in the smart grid: Design and evaluation issues. IEEE Network, 26(6), pp.48-53.

Karyakina and Melnikov (2017). Comparison of methods for predicting the customer churn in Internet service provider companies. Machine Learning and Data Analysis, 3(4), pp.250-256

Lee, Y. (2014). A Study on Logical Redundancy Network Implementation Using Network Virtualization. The Journal of Korean Institute of Information Technology, 12(5).

Levin, G. (2017). Choosing A Computer for Video Editing. [online] Desktop-Documentaries.com. Available at: https://www.desktop-documentaries.com/computer-for-video-editing.html [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Lexmark, L. (2018). Lexmark CX725dthe. [online] Lexmark.com. Available at: https://www.lexmark.com/en_us/printer/10265/Lexmark-CX725dthe [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

LI, Q. (2012). Design and implementation of network firewall system based on Godson CPU. Journal of Computer Applications, 28(6), pp.1372-1375.

Lin, D., Hamdi, M. and Muppala, J. (2012). Distributed Packet Buffers for High-Bandwidth Switches and Routers. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 23(7), pp.1178-1192.

Matthew, P. (2018). How to choose the best computer for graphic design – 99designs. [online] 99designs. Available at: https://99designs.com/blog/tips/best-computer-graphic-design/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Oppenheimer, P. (2011). Top-down network design. Indianapolis, Ind.: Cisco Press.

Pop, P. (2012). Generalized network design problems. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Rodno, J. (2017). Design and Implementation of CASER protocol for Wireless Sensor Network. International Journal of Modern Trends in Engineering & Research, 4(10), pp.31-37.

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Wickboldt, J., De Jesus, W., Isolani, P., Both, C., Rochol, J. and Granville, L. (2015). Software-defined networking: management requirements and challenges. IEEE Communications Magazine, 53(1), pp.278-285.

Zhang, X. and Shin, K. (2013). Cooperative Carrier Signaling: Harmonizing Coexisting WPAN and WLAN Devices. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 21(2), pp.426-439.

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