NETWORK PROPOSAL

NETWORK PROPOSAL

FOR ACME COMPUTER COMPANY

Magdi Dahab

NOVA NETWORK CONSULTANT

Introduction:

Our Clint is ACME computer company in Alexandria, VA. ACME is a growing computer company works in building computers in their company And sell it by their Marketing department to many department stores in VA and many other States.

Analysis:

This proposal is a response to a request for proposal sent to us from ACME requesting to provide a proposal to help the company To over come their network problems and to rebuild to be ready for the expecting growing of the company within the coming few years. ACME’s network is facing a lot of problems. It is slow and it is getting slower. The Internet connection is just 56k connection and it has a bad impact over the customer reaction when they browsing the company Web pages. The network goes down for hours so often and that is interrupting the work in the company

Challenges:

Analysis the current situation: hardware, wiring, software and training needs.

Advice on cost-effective alternative strategies, including lowering the costs by using the production line of the company For building servers and using the engineers and the technician of the company In the installation.

Design a network that can provide the company With fast data transmission between the departments.

Segment the network to avoid the high load of the data over the network.

Add all the necessary with hardware and software to provide the worker all the tools needed to help them to work in a better way.

The current network:

ACME has a network consists of a Ethernet bus backbone connected to it all the departments of the company by coax cables.

All the departments are connected in buses.

The network has one server acting as file server, SQL server, Web server-mail server, print server and it operates by using Windows NT as operating system.

All the company Departments are connected to this network; the Engineering dept. has 55 users. All of them connected together in an Ethernet bus topology. Most of the machines have AUTO CAD software and it is working so slowly.

The engineering department has 2-laser printers attached to two workstations and all users are sharing them, also it has a plotter connected to the network by a print server and also a laser printer attached directly to the network.

The production departments have 25 users and it has 2 printers attached to the workstation and all the users are sharing them.

The administration department has only 10 users and they are sharing 2 printers. They are also in bus topology and wired by Coax cables.

The Marketing departments have 35 users and they are using SQL server and they are connected to the network in a bus and sharing 2 printers one of them attached directly to the network by the print server.

Alternatives:

Our first alternative is keeping the current wiring as a bus coax cables to save some of the costs.
Changing the current wiring to 5 Category STP to provide flexibility to add users in the future.
Changing all networks to 100 base-T.
Changing the engineering department only to 100 base-T to be able to provide the engineers with fast connection that can work with The AUTO CAD application better.
Adding fax server, a mirror server to take over if some thing happened to the NT server and a back up server to back up all the data from the file servers.

The suggested topology:

After studying the current topology and our customer needs we suggest this topology as the closest topology to provide ACME with it needs:

Changing the topology for all the departments to star topology by connecting all the computers to a fast hub by using TP category 5.

Changing the Internet connection to a leased T1 connection from a local provider and connected to a router and connect the web server and e-mail server to it. Protected the network from any hacker by using a firewall.

Putting the NT server, SQL server, back up server, fax server, a mirror server and a print server in a FDDI ring and connect them to the network by using a fast switch.

Changing the engineering dept. to 100 Base-T and to be able to maximize its benefits from having all the servers in a fast a FDDI and fast switch.

A simple diagram for our suggestion is attached.

Every department will have a big laser printer attached to the network and communicated by print server. Also every 6 users will be serve by a HP laser printer. Minimum of 2 HP laser printers in the departments.

We suggest having the FDDI ring with the server to be located in the engineering department and assign two engineers to administrate the work in the network.

We NOVA network consultant will try to serve you with all our efforts to give you the best network for your company needs which can offer you high speed connectivity with cost efficiency.Prices are negotiable on request.

Home

Our first alternative is keeping the current wiring as a bus coax cables to save some of the costs.

Changing the current wiring to 5 Category STP to provide flexibility to add users in the future.

Changing all networks to 100 base-T.

Changing the engineering department only to 100 base-T to be able to provide the engineers with fast connection that can work with The AUTO CAD application better.

Adding fax server, a mirror server to take over if some thing happened to the NT server and a back up server to back up all the data from the file servers.