The EteX Company, which specializes in e-textbooks, is looking to provide Intern

Question

The EteX Company, which specializes in e-textbooks, is looking to provide Internetworking capabilities from its home location in Boston, MA to three new satellite offices. The locations of these offices are San Antonio, TX; Miami, FL; and Seattle, WA. Since all textbooks are sold and accessed through the Internet, any disruption of computing services lasting longer than 48 hours would have a significant impact on the company’s revenue and reputation. Therefore, the company wishes to have the capabilities of shared network resources between offices. Each office has 100 nodes, 10 servers on three LANs, and one storage area network. Design a network solution that will provide the necessary communication between the offices. This should include, but not be limited to: the type of network media or services used; required networking equipment; address scheme; protocols and connection types used; and how it will be managed by a single network administrator.

Explanation / Answer

To connect all the locations of EteX, a wide area network will be used to interconnect the Local area network in each network. Through the WAN, users in all three locations can communicate with each other. WAN will be built by Internet service providers providing connections to the company’s LAN networks. Instead of using leased lines, it will rely on packet switching method (Yoo, 2006). Packet switching is more appropriate for the organization as it is available where bandwidth is shared between the users in the WAN and is charged based on committed traffic rate. Additionally, it is suited for bursty data transfers but requires special configuration to support strict QoS requirements. The protocols used in the network include Internet network, wireless network, and network routing protocol. Internet protocols involve a set of related network protocols which include internet protocol, TCP, HTTP, UDP, and FTP used to provide additional network capabilities (Baker, 2011). Website network protocols used include LTE, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth designed to be used on wireless networks and deal with issues of security and variable data types. Network routing protocols designed for use in network routers are used in the network. The routing protocol identifies other routers and maintains routes between sources and destinations of messages within the network.

The network solution requires an array of networking equipment to create a connection for the three company locations. Switches are required to connect various devices to a network within the company. The switch can connect the computers and the storage area enabling access to shared resources (Iniewski, 2008). Router is a valuable component in the network that tie the storage area network to the LAN. Additionally, the router connects the LANs to the Internet and eventually the WAN. Cables and connectors such as Ethernet cable and coaxial cable are required to link together hosts such as printers, servers, and computers on the network. A wireless access point is required to allow Wi-Fi-compliant devices to connect to the network wirelessly. Additionally, a hardware firewall is required in the network to block security barriers.

For the address scheme, the computers, and other hosts within the LAN connected to the modem will have a LAN IP address. The modem router will have a LAN IP address towards the connected hosts and a WAN IP address for the internet service provider. The WAN will be managed by one administrator who will have the capability to access computers and other devices in the network. To create one administrator, the remote router management will be configured to enable one user to administer the network from the WAN.

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