Computer Networking in the Organization - Assignment Example

? LAN Design al Affiliation: Executive Summary This is a project proposal for computer networking for a CPA firm. Currently, the organization lacks networked computers. Thus, it is open to any LAN design proposal the team can offer. Computer networking in the firm will enable it to up its efficiency and output in all the departments. The name of the network is “CPA LAN.” The proposed LAN project meets the firm’s mission statement through honoring the level of service agreement standard. It is designed to serve all the five departments of the organization. The departments are located in the same building but on different wings. The network is only meant for administrative purposes and specifically, it is designed for office staffs. CPA LAN is designed to achieve a number of business and operational objectives. To start with, the network is designed to provide a secure administrative and computing service for every department in the firm. Physically and functionally, the network is designed to be restricted from non-employees of the CPA firm; no outsider can gain access to the firm’s network thus it minimizes the risk of unauthorized access. Secondly, the network is meant for versatile processing of information. It will enable its users to process, retrieve and store texts in form of non-ASCII and ASCII, video, graphics and audio from all the connected computers in the firm. Lastly, the CPA firm LAN will combine all the capabilities and powers of various facilities across the organization so as to develop a collaborative medium which will enable the users of the network to combine skill and ideas regardless of their locations in the building (Campbell, 1995). Moreover, the primary users of this LAN will be 6 administrators, 6 secretaries, 10 members from the department of curriculum development, 8 members from the human resource department, 6 members from the finance department and 3 members from the computer and technology department. All the remaining workers will be secondary users of the network in a way that they will be receiving information which is produced or rather extracted from the network; they will not directly access the network. The assumption of this design is that the firm will have a firewall to protect all its relevant information from getting into and leaking from the network. Requirements of the Network Data type: The type of data to be served by this network will comprise of accounting information, bulletins, personal profiles, reports and web pages. Most of the data will be stored in non-ASCII and ASCII formats. Sources of data: The data will be developed and used at all points or stations of the network. It will be created by software applications which are compatible with Microsoft Windows 2007; primarily Microsoft Office 2007 (Excel, Access, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint), Dream Weaver, Photoshop, Media Player and Notepad. Number of users at various levels: From the major departmental offices, administration, human resource, finance and accounting, curriculum development and computer and technology extension, thirty one regular primary users will be served. The priority levels to be supported by the network include management, user and background. They range from top, medium to bottom respectively. A crucial point to note here is that the three levels are not corresponding to administrative levels in the firm; they are the LAN service levels. This implies that the network management procedures will receive the top most priority, followed by most network procedures which will receive the medium priority and finally few procedures will receive a low priority. A point to note here is that the CPA LAN management will be consuming smaller amounts of bandwidth available; they will enjoy an identical support (Hricik, 2008). Requirements for speed transmission: The CPA LAN will be transparent to all the users. This means that all the remotely executed procedures, files transfers and applications should appear to operate quickly. An average of 25mbps per user within the LAN and 15mbps per user between various LANs will effectively support the required performance in the firm. Estimates of Load Variation: The tabulated data in the organization shows that the highest average volume of traffic will take place between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. during the week days; Monday to Friday. The peak traffic volume in the network is expected to occur thrice during the day; at 7:30 a.m., at noon and at 5:30 p.m. During the nights and on weekends, the traffic will always be minimal apart from the backups done from PCs to network servers. Thus, to completely avoid complaints from users, the LAN is designed in a way that it can handle all the peak and off-peak traffic loads (Campbell, 1995). Storage Requirements: Through observations and interviews, the LAN users’ anticipation of storage requirement shows that each primary user will require 100MB, averagely, of the server’s space in addition to the local PC capacity. Moreover, the LAN OS will occupy approximately 498 MB of the network server. Thus, each PC will be allocated 10GB capacity and each network server will have a capacity of 20GB. The main server will have a capacity close to 37GB (Birrell & Nelson, 1984). Security requirement: A firewall will effectively be used to limit the access of unauthorized users. User accounts together with passwords will be provided for every user and there will be extremely different access abilities for the network users and network managers (Kaminsky, 2010). Below are a number of diagrams of the proposed network: Proposal’s Cost Analysis References Birrell, A.D. & Nelson, B.J. (1984). "Implementing Remote Procedure Calls," ACM Trans. on Computer Systems, vol. 2, p. 39-59. Campbell, R. H. (1995). LAN (Local Area Network) Proposal. Retrieved from: http://srg.cs.uiuc.edu/schools/rc-lan.htm Hricik, T. (2008). Local Area Network Proposal. Retrieved from: http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/t/a/tah5103/ist250/220NetProposal.pdf Kaminsky, W. ( 2010). What is Network Security? Retrieved from: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-network-security.htm Read More