Analyzing Network Requirements And Selecting Hardware For A Small Office Network

Data gathering techniques

The “Sydney Education Group (SEG)” has been a rising provider of education. The goal of the business is to deliver vocational education and training for the international students. To take the business forward, they have taken a decision of opening a new office in the area of Brisbane.

SEG contracted the managed services of “Complete IT Solutions (CIS)” to finish their project. As a network administrator at CIS, an investigation is needed to be done by preparing a recommendation report. This should satisfy every requirement for the company.

The report covers network requirement, configuration and cost of hardware and software with network diagram, topology and configuration. Testing and threat detection methods are analyzed regarding security with backup plan and a sign off form. Lastly a meeting minute is prepared using various methods.

Every data gathering methods possess particular situations, for gaining an entire view from various set of stakeholders and clients. The sample questions must be like the following:

• What applications are to be used?
• Where the access points should be installed?
• What kind of devices would associate to wireless?

 Here one-on-one interview and group interviews are undertaken.

The discussion must be done out ahead of time on the basis of network administration. Some open ended questions could be asked with probing questions uncovering the requirements (Chang and Liu 2015).

It would be same as the above except the fact that more than one people would be interviewed. This should work well as everybody has been at the same level or role. It should be done more formality for gathering information (Patel, Ghaghda and Nagecha 2014). A

richer set of requirements must be uncovered in a lesser time period, keeping the group focused.

Before installing any system, the network requirements are needed to be understood. Combining the information with the perquisites of the configuration manager, decision must be taken about the site designing and server placement of site system.  The elements that are to be considered include the number of nodes, service area, transmission security and robustness and license-free operation (Islam and Zareen 2014). This must also consider the throughput, connection to backbone LAN, power consumption of battery and collocated network operation.

Total number of desktops required is 10. The processor needed is Core i5, 2.0 GHz. The RAM must be 4GB with a hard drive of 500 GB.

The monitor must be at least 22 inches. There must be ten monitors of this type. Each of them should be connected with wired or wireless mouse.

The printer must comprise of Auto Wireless Connect, Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). This should also include the Wireless Setup Wizard. This is the product with display. There must also be USB setup of wireless. This is the product without display. 

This must be a single NAS with a minimum of 1 TV supporting RAID-5. There should be 1GB of RAM present with a network port.

This should be two in number, supporting both 2.4 and 5 GHz. There must be gigabit Ethernet port and minimum of 300 Mbps speed. There should be the scope of guest access.

Fiber channels of 50 micrometer multimode with the LC/LC or LC/SC connectors must be applied.

One-on-one interviews

There could be various application software needed for network administration. These include the Sysinternals Suite, Windows Support and Resource Kit Tools like the portable version of nmap 3.8, Portable Web Browser like Maxthon, Avant and Sleipnir (Raleigh, Lavine and Raissinia 2015).

There must be 10 desktops with Windows 7 enterprise installed in each one of them.

Vendor’s Detail:

Quote:

Quote No:	201	Date:	21/07/2017
	Expiry Date:   20/07/2020                       15/06/2020
Status:	Active		Served By:

Ordered by : Complete IT Solutions

Delivered to: Sydney Education Group

Barcode	Description	Tax	Quantity	Price in $	Total in $
232425	22″ IBM E54 Monitor (black; 13.8″ viewable)	GST	22	100	22000
4337645	73GB 10K RPM SCSI hard drive	GST	1	650	650
4645121	1GB DDR PC2100 ECC RAM DIMM	GST	22	880	19360
5451274	2.8GHz 533MHz 512KB L2 Cache Upgrade with Xeon Processor	GST	22	1000	22000
5422484	IBM xSeries 235 Tower, Xeon CPU 2.8GHz; 512MB RAM; 48X CD-ROM	GST	22	2980	65560

Payment details	Quote totals
There has been a total of 5 items. There must be no warranty without any valid invoice. The exchange or refund must be done within seven days from purchasing. This would only happen if the product of found faulty without any physical damage. There must be complete return with packaging in such cases. For further details the store must be looked into.	Subtotal Net Discount Rounding Taxes
Total cost

The non-split-horizon DNS as network topology could be selected. The DMZ networks are the internal virtual machines, Internet reverse proxy and the internal network. The configuration would allow the users in signing in and then join the meetings securely from Internet without any VPN connection (Sutaria et al. 2014). Here every user could access the WebEX site URL utilizing the public VIP address. The primary benefit of this is the tight control over the traffic coming in and going out of the network. It addresses the more simple and common requirements of DNS network. However, the setup has been complex and the internal traffic could get directed to the DMZ network.

The wireless network should meet the similar kind of requirements that has been typical for any LAN (Dua 2014). This must include high capacity, capability to cover low distances, total connectivity established among the attached stations and the broad cast capabilities.

The static IP addresses are to be supported and distributed to the clients. They must meet particular reasonable requirements. The requirements met by clients must not be restricted to the roaming requirements of limited clients, lack of high bandwidth and availability, reasonable hardship, fixed device behaving improperly in the DHCP environment and the inbound connectivity to the device with any predictive IP (Evans et al. 2014).

There could be two kinds of network addresses. The first one is the Media Access Control (MAC). The second one is the IP or Internet Protocol address. The former one is the physical address existing on the Data Link or Layer 2 layer of the OSI or Open System Interconnection. The second one the virtual address operating on the Network layer or the Layer 3 (De Gante, Aslan and Matrawy 2014).

There have been 3 classes. The initial octet Class A address is the network portion. Hence the class an address of the 10.1.25.1 comprises of the major network address of ten. The other octets 2, 3, 4 are present there for the hosts.

Network adapters comprises of unique network addresses (Helen and Arivazhagan 2014). As a new computer id needed to be connected to a staff network, the network address of the “wired network address” is required.

This portion of the address would help to recognize the hosts like device needing the network interface controller such as networked printer or computers over the network. 

Subnet mask:

This has been used by TCP/IP protocol for finding whether the host has been on the remote network or local subnet.

Services to be installed:

DHCP:

This would automatically deliver an IP host with the IP address and the other relevant configuration information like the subnet mask and default gateway (Chi et al. 2014).

Group Interviews

DNS:

This is the central part of the Internet that provides the method to match names to the numbers.

 The protocols suitable in this case might be the “Beacon-less Geographic Routing Protocols”, SHRP or “Simple Hierarchical Routing Protocol”, “QoS Routing Protocols based on Artificial Intelligence” (Ji, Chen and Zhong 2015).

The total price estimated is about 129,570 dollars.

Type:

The WAN type is basically “Dynamic IP Address”.

Vendor:

The vendor is UTM or Unified Threat management.

The possible security threats must include:

Intrusion detection: The wireless network “Intrusion Detection System” or IDS could be used to detect the various intrusions. This would consistently monitor the packets over a network site and make attempts for recognizing the attempted breaks in the system (Hines, Tapia and Cousins 2015). They must also determine intrusions like attempts causing “Denial of Service” and so on.

Penetration testing techniques: The only boundaries known by the wireless networks are their signals. Thus it become simpler for the hackers in indentifying the networks by driving around the office buildings with the network equipment called war driving (Khan et al. 2015). The aim of the Penetration testing technique is to mitigate the above problem with determine the other security gaps, designing flaws, operation or implementation of the wireless network.

Authentication methods: The wireless security has been safeguarding of the unauthorized access or harm to the computers using the wireless networks. The most popular types of this security are the WPA or Wi-Fi Protected Access and WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy.

Network protocols and data encryption: None of the current protocol could provide any optimal solution for every different wireless usages expected. The network protocols that have been proven especially in the case of the current situation are the “60 GHz Protocols – WirelessHD and WiGig” and the   “Wireless Home Automation Protocols – Z-Wave and Zigbee” (Kuzlu, Pipattanasomporn and Rahman 2014).

Date of backup	Media number used	Type of backup	Files backup up	Errors or comments
25.7.2017	2017890	List item	Checking recycle and version library	Some of the tools could be restored only at the library level.
2.8.17	2118293	Site	Toolset for recovering the site	The SharePoint delivers recovery functionality.
15.8.17	3425261	Application	Toolset for recovering the site
27.8.17	3748409	Server	Loading the windows server in every service packs, joining domain, installing share point, service packs	Data could be restored depending on the server.
12.9.17	4253739	Farm	Loading the windows server in every service packs, joining domain, installing share point, service packs	Slipstreaming must be considered as much as possible.

Version	Date	Author	Description
0001	22.71.17	Network administrator at Complete IT Solutions	Design Proposal

Conclusions:

The above report has discussed the data gathering techniques including various types of questions. The network requirements and the hardware and software costs and configuration have been described. The network diagram illustrates the plan to be implemented at Sydney Education Group. The topology and configuration are analyzed with various ways to detect and test the security threats. The overview of the security issues in the wireless network has focused on the protocols of routing and contributed with the resolutions to make the organization more secure. The wireless networks are the emerging technologies, and thus the study covering the security aspects of the routing layers are relatively latest. The report has also aimed at the security of the network topology information. The most adaptable network types are discussed. The topology information comprises of great value and the network must be secured against the intrusions that might lead to get exposed to severe consequences.  

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