Office Network Design Essay Examples

Current situation

The current situation is such that there is no computer network at all in offices and thus the design needs to be done from the scratch.

Design Recommendations

I would like to recommend the following: First is that the modular design to be made should take the form of the hierarchical network structure. Second is that the total design should use network requirements such as virtual private network (VPN), wireless connection, guided cabling such as optic fibre cable and CAT 6 network cables, routers and switches. Others include database servers, email messaging servers with high specifications and hosted services like web, file transfer protocol (FTP) and DNS and client computers.

Reasons for Recommendations

The hierarchical structure is recommended in this case because of many reasons. Firstly is that is that it will permit growth of the network to function for long period of time such as 10 years without much alteration of the design structure. Secondly is that hierarchical design limits the number of communicating routers hence minimizing the total cost of purchasing suitable internetworking devices for every layer of hierarchy. The modular design of hierarchical structure also permits precise capacity planning in every layer of hierarchy thus reducing wasted bandwidth. The hierarchical design also facilitates future changes to the network by easily adding new or replacing devices which cause only local change. In addition, hierarchical design structure enables efficient use of address space, improves routing efficiency as well as system performance. The optic fiber cabling is recommended since it has high d and is speedier. Routers, switches and wireless connections will play the role of implementing the three layers needed which include core, and access layer.

Network diagram

Proposed cabling
The office network needs to use both wireless connection as well as wired connection. The wired connection includes optic fiber cable and CAT 6 network cables.

Network speeds

The normal transaction data is to go at a speed of 10as well as bulk data. The voice over internet protocol (VoIP) is to operate at 32kbps, VoIP bearer at 128kbps with multimedia conferencing at 5mbps. The signaling operations should take place at the speed of 32kbps. The link speeds include 4Mbps, 10Mbps, 16Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, 10Gbps and over for optic fiber cable. Every link speed in this case has its own IEEE 802.1D recommended cost.

Routing protocols

The network is expected to use the fast-converging routing protocols which are made for hierarchical topologies. Other protocols to be considered for modular hierarchical topologies include Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), intermediate system-to- intermediate system(IS-IS), Border gateway protocol(BGP) and enhanced interior gateway routing protocol(enhanced IGP). The routers within the core, distribution and access layers can run Hot standby router protocol (HSRP) or virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP). HSRP functions by creating a virtual router called phantom. The HSRP router on local area network (LAN) communicates among them to signify both the active and standby routers. The problem with the routing protocols such as OSPF and EIGRP is not the traffic broadcasting and CPU resources that are used for routing but the amount of work and bandwidth needed to set up routing after an outage. Apart from the routing protocol, the switching protocols are also needed.