Wireless network implementation (Enterprise Network Design (Aston)) - Case Study Example

Network Design Enterprise Network Design Aston has recently reached the limits of its network. However, the company has not reached the limit on expanding and making better products. As a result, this network upgrade will help Aston to grow and stay on top for many years to come. This is accomplished by creating a faster and more reliable connection between all branches and the headquarters. The upgrade will also take advantage of all the current technologies out there such as VoIP to eliminate cost and free up budgeted dollars to be used more productively. One major problem with the current network is the reliability. With this upgrade there will be a large amount of redundancy built in. There will be a mesh topology setup in the core and distribution layers. Along with the redundant paths there will be redundant hardware in those layers. This will allow for more throughput and fault tolerance. QoS will also be implemented in all layers of the network to improve performance. The current reliability problems are half hardware failure and half over utilization of circuits. With the addition of QoS and redundancy, we can assure that mission critical applications will never fail. 5.1.1 Design Requirements Aston is a leading firm in the private sector legal support business. These accounts are served worldwide by their franchise network. As you can tell, Aston is on a mission to keep trucks rolling by creating and delivering the best products and services for customers. Existing Network Design Analysis The current network design analysis showed us that there are strong areas of the network and many weak areas. The current networks strongest point is in the campus backbone. Currently there is a full mesh between all routers. Because of this setup the backbone is the strongest part of the network. However, the backbone is currently running on 100 Mbps copper which is causing bottlenecks during peak usage. The existing network has far more weak areas then strong ones. We found one of the weakest areas of the network to be in the server farm. There is currently only one main layer 2 switch connecting the server farm to the campus backbone. As a result there is one single point of failure. Along with the lack of redundancy, there are no layer 3 capabilities inside the server farm. Also, all connections were made with copper to the campus backbone which limits the speed. Another area of concern is with the building distribution layer. This layer also has no layer 3 capabilities and has no redundant paths. There are multiple switches in the building distribution but in the event of a failure the core will have to reroute all traffic due to lack of appropriate redundancy. Another area that lacks redundancy is the edge distribution module. Currently if the edge distribution router were to fail, all internet and internal communications with other branches would be lost. Along with lack of redundancy, there were many security concerns. Currently there is only one firewall and it is placed between the internet service provider and the edge distribution router. This is a good start to securing the network but there is a lack of intrusion detection which is a concern. Also, the current e-commerce connection is in front of the firewall which provides absolutely no protection to the e-commerce server from the outside world. Finally, the other area of concern is the lack of outside accessibility. Currently there is only one remote access server which accepts incoming modem connections. The current system is not capable of support the very large mobile work force of Aston and it does not support current technology. In order for a remote worker to gain access to the network they have to have a dial up modem and a telephone line. Once the connection is made the speed is slow and the functionality is limited. Along with the lack of speed and functionality, the network is limited on its ability to upgrade to VPN technology. Currently there is only one internet service provider that only provides 3 Mbps which is barely enough for current operations and would not support addition VPN traffic. Technical Goals and Constraints of New Network The new network should provide the performance needed to support all employees and customers. In order to achieve this goal we must overcome the constraint of the current internet service provider. Currently they are only capable of providing a 3 Mbps connection to the corporate office. To overcome this constraint we will have to look at other service providers. The new network should also provide 100% availability to employees and customers. The disaster recovery equipment needed to provide the availability is already in place. However, there is a problem with the current offsite disaster recovery facility. They currently use the same provider as the corporate office and when one network goes down so does the other. We will overcome this restraint when we move our corporate office to a new service provider which is needed in order to get the required bandwidth. The third major goal of the new network is to provide support for modern applications across the entire enterprise. This will eliminated the double entry that is currently being done between the Oracle and CICS systems. With the increased bandwidth at the central office they will be able to provide an Oracle interface to their national account customer. Once this is possible they will be able to eliminate their current CICS environment and move everything to the more modern and reliable Oracle platform. Another major goal in this network upgrade is to increase the security. With the current system architecture there is not IDS or advanced firewall configurations. As with the other goals there is a constraint involved with implementing the IDS and advanced firewalls. Currently the IT department does not have any employees knowledgeable with IDS or firewalls. As a result, they will not be able to support the network we build. In order to overcome this constraint we will have to provide the technicians with training on security and the systems being integrated. New Network Design Analysis The new network will strengthen all areas of the network and replace all old technologies with the latest and greatest. The campus backbone in the new network will consist of layer 3 switches connected with wireless LAN. This will eliminate the bottlenecks we currently experience at peak traffic times. Extended from the campus backbone, the edge distribution, building distribution and server farm will all have new, fully redundant, layer 3 switches which will be connected via wireless LAN. The server farm will also provide the home for a few new servers. First, we will add a call manager which will provide VoIP to all of the workstations within the company. The call manager server will connect to the PSTN for dial tone and provide the corporate and branch locations with voice services. Along with the addition of VoIP, we will implement a new videoconferencing server which will allow management to hold video conferences within the company and with vendors and partners. There are a lot of changes in the enterprise edge. First, we have added intrusion detection to the internet connectivity, e-commerce, and remote access modules. We have upgraded the CICS e-commerce server to a new Oracle solution which will integrate into the current Oracle ERP system and provide the functionality needed for national accounts. We have also added a second internet service provider which will provide much needed additional bandwidth and redundancy to the outside world. With the increase in bandwidth we were able to add VPN technology along side the current remote access solution. The entire company will take on a Class A IP scheme. This is the best solution due to the large number of potential clients at one location. Also, it gives us the option of using multiple subnets and it will never require us to change the IP format for a very long time. If we were to go with a Class B or C address scheme then we could run out of network space in the next 3-5 years. Testing Plan To meet the strict testing requirements of Aston, we will implement a pilot program. A pilot program will test and verify the design before the network is launched (Teare, 2004). The pilot network will be tested on many different levels. First we will test the routing protocol setup. We will verify that every router will send and receive updates when critical links are both taken down and setup. We will also evaluate the metrics being used by the routing protocol to make sure that the routes being submitted to the routing table are the best possible routes. Once we are satisfied with the networks routing, we will add a few test clients and servers. These clients and servers will be responsible for stress testing the network. This will allow us to verify the QoS and design to ensure it is capable of handling the work loads that will be placed on it. We will run the stress test and evaluate the results daily for 30 days. Once we have a consecutive 30 days of acceptable test results we will report to the board of directors and request approval for implementation. Project Budget, Cost/Benefit Analysis, ROI The network upgrade project has a set budget of 5 million dollars. This budget should include all of the hardware, training and installation services. The cost of the hardware for this project will be just over 4 million dollars. There will be a cost of $200,000 towards training and $750,000 towards consulting and installation services. This will bring us just under our 5 million dollar budget. There will be a lot of benefits with the new network. First, we will have 100% uptime and a much faster network which will save employees time. It is estimated that the efficiency of the new network will save all employees 1 hour of time each week. This will result in 197,600 hours of saved payroll at an average rate of $10 per hour. The total savings in payroll is estimated at 1,976,000 dollars a year. The new network also has a state of the art VoIP system which will reduce the current long distance charges by 50% by using on-net communications. Our current long distance charges are $24,000 a month which will give use a cost savings estimated at $144,000 a year. We also will be able to bring out state of the art Oracle ERP system to the e-commerce module which will help increase customer support. As a result we will be more competitive to national accounts. This is estimated to increase our profits by $1 million a year. Detailed Components and Parts Summary Headquarters Hardware Part Number Price Qty Total Catalyst 1900 WS-C1900 1,000 4 4,000 Catalyst 2924 XL WS-C2924-XL-EN 1,995 3 5,985 Catalyst 6509 WS-C6509 9,995 8 79,960 Cisco 2621 CISCO2621 3,095 4 12,380 Cisco IP/TV 3411 IPTV-3411-CTRL 15,000 1 15,000 Cisco VPN 3015-NR CVPN3015-NR 10,500 1 10,500 Pix 10/100 Single-port Ethernet Card PIX-1FE 200 5 1,000 Pix 515 Firewall PIX-515 6,995 3 6,995 VWIC-1MFT-T1 VWIC-1MFT-T1 1,300 1 1,300 WIC-1DSU-T1 WIC-1DSU-1T 1,000 3 3,000 WS-G5484 WS-G5484 500 30 15,000 WS-X6348-RJ-45 WS-X6348-RJ-45 12,995 7 90,965 7912 IP Phone CP-7912G-CH1 325 2,800 910,000 Call Manger 7845 MCS-7845-H1-ECS2 23,000 1 23,000 Call Manager 4.1 CM4.1-K9-7845 15,995 1 15,995 Pricing from Comstor (Hall, 2006). Total Headquarters Cost = $1,195,080 Branch Hardware Part Number Price Qty Total Catalyst 1900 WS-C1900 1,000 1 1,000 Catalyst 2924 XL WS-C2924-XL-EN 1,995 3 5,985 Catalyst 6509 WS-C6509 9,995 8 79,960 Cisco 2621 CISCO2621 3,095 3 9,285 Pix 10/100 Single-port Ethernet Card PIX-1FE 200 2 400 Pix 515 Firewall PIX-515 6,995 1 6,995 VWIC-1MFT-T1 VWIC-1MFT-T1 1,300 1 1,300 WIC-1DSU-T1 WIC-1DSU-1T 1,000 2 2,000 WS-G5484 WS-G5484 500 30 15,000 WS-X6348-RJ-45 WS-X6348-RJ-45 12,995 7 90,965 7912 IP Phone CP-7912G-CH1 325 100 32,500 Call Manger 7845 MCS-7845-H1-ECS2 23,000 1 23,000 Call Manager 4.1 CM4.1-K9-7845 15,995 1 15,995 Pricing from Comstor (Hall, 2006). Total Branch Cost = $284,385 Existing Network Design New Network Design Conclusion Currently Aston has a network that has reached its limits. The only option we have to continue moving forward is to upgrade the network. The network upgrade will include many new features such as redundant service providers, VoIP, and MPLS connecting all branches. This new network will allow us to implement QoS and take advantage of all the current technologies that are offered today. Because we are taking advantage of a lot of the current technologies, Aston will benefit from a large ROI. This system will pay for itself in just over a year and a half and will bring more then 8 million dollars in savings to this company in the first 4 years. The upgrade will allow employees to work more efficiently and will provide a more reliable and professional transactional database for all national accounts. All in all, this upgrade will increase reliability, productivity, and customer service. Read More