You Decide: The Leonard Cooper Charter School LAN Upgrade Proposal

Stakeholder Concerns

1) When the instructors check email and report attendance, the existing network

experiences congestion, collisions proliferate, and throughput slows down.

2) Existing network bandwidth is 10 Mb.

3) Fifty printers on the network still get all filled up.

4) Connections to the mail server are slow.

5) The HVAC technician considers that having wireless access points would provide a

more convenient solution.

6) In the new wing, all 23 classrooms need to be linked to the network.

7) The new-wing and old-wing backbone switches are 120 meter apart. They are

connected by slow twisted-pair wiring.

8) VoIP needs to be integrated into the current data network.

The Preferred Solution Package

The existing network capacity that stands at just 10 Mb is considered to be a more serious

problem that needs more attention. Category 6 UTP 1000BaseF Ethernet cabling is a

better solution. It increases the maximum data (transfer) rate from 10 Mb to 1 gigabyte

per second. Such bandwidth addresses the HVAC technician’s request for remote access

to his devices. When the seven networked classrooms access personal emails and send

attendance at the same time early in the morning, transferring at such a rate clears up the

congestion experienced.

The optimal solution should create provisions for assembling all the servers

(including the printer servers as discussed below) for effectiveness of diagnostics and

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maintenance. Twenty-three more classrooms must also be added to the network. With the

built-in Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) contention-

based media access control technique, Ethernet cabling will assist in attenuating the

issues of collision. Before attempting to re-transmit on the network, the CD technique

assigns each network interface card on the desktop PCs a random time interval in order to

minimize the number of collisions to a number that becomes virtually invisible to users.

As described in the above statement, the backbone for the improve network

should be fiber optic to accommodate future expansion. When the backbone switch in the

new wing is turned on, this will allow room for including VoIP in network services and

will override the issues of congestion. For the slow twisted-pair wiring that currently

exists, the upgrading of the network cabling will also reduce the issues of the distance to

the backbone located in the old wing (120 meters away).

The administrative workers account for most of the overloading that the 50

networked printers they themselves experience. The first step in creating the server farm

is to create a dedicated printer server for clearing out the limited queuing spaces available

on the printers. The second step is to link the printer server to the existing printers under

the Ethernet bus topology new printers can be localized in the new wing. The above

requirement may need to have the two hubs to be located somewhere between the server

farm and the administration offices, where the printer server is located and two more

servers located right beside the new-wing backbone switch.

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Physical planning must make provision for:

1. Beside the new-wing backbone switch, at least two more 24-port switches have to

be put into place in order to accommodate the 23 new classrooms.

2. At least one more switched 100BaseT needs to be placed adjacent to the location

that is targeted for the main server farm. The server room must accommodate 1) the

administrative data server; 2) the Internet access and firewall server; 3) the student data

server; and 4) a network admin server that will also perform backups to a remote

location.

3. The backbone and LAN wiring ran through the ceiling and it can be accessed for

servicing mainly through the switches housed in locked closets.

4. The current wireless standard is 802.11n and this speed is in excess of 300 Mbps.

4G mobile technology is 12 Mbps or better. The flexibility of attaching wireless to the

school facility network means that it can be ready for upgrading to 40- or 100-GBE in the

near future. Separate or dual ducting for a wireless-only backbone should already be

planned in order to create for the school a network more amendable for future changes.

Therefore, it is a good idea to install wireless access points where there is no physical

direct line connection to the network. This will prepare the school’s network for future

modification.

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Network Management iLab Solution

Technology

Transcript of Network Management iLab Solution