Internet Protocol Internetworking - Reasons for Using VLAN in XUM - Case Study Example

Internet Protocol Internetworking Insert Insert XUM is an organization that has grown to have three branches in Houston region, San Francisco, and Denver area. Initially, it was solely located in San Francisco. XUM is made up of four departments inclusive of sales, finance, human resources and research and development. This project seeks to examine integration and Internet protocol address scheme of its original location. From the information obtained, we try to minimize the routing tables at the summarization points at Houston. Further, the project will establish a VLAN structure that will enable it to isolate the broadcast traffic. It also concerns with ensuring that the wide area network at Houston is in a position of accommodating the traffic in the entire network. Whereas using static addresses has its advantages, the biggest downside is high administrative demands even when minor changes occur in the network. To cater for this, the new phase will use dynamic addressing system so that the hosts acquire Internet protocol automatically. As a result, this lowers the administrative overhead. The virtual local area network is from the departments available in XUM. Consequently, the VLANs are sales vlan2, finance vlan3, human resources vlan4, research and development vlan5, default vlan1 and management vlan6. Creating the VLAN The creation of the VLAN at XUM results from the departments available. Therefore, there are four data VLANs namely sales VLAN2, finance VLAN3, human resource VLAN4, Research, and development VLAN5. In addition, a native VLAN is the default VLAN1. Furthermore, there is a management VLAN VLAN6 that gets IP addresses to enable the management to manage the switch. It has been possible with remote control tools that allow management to ssh or telnet the switch through the management VLAN. To allow for communication of personal computers on similar VLANs but separated by a switch or a number of switches, a trunk link now exists between the switches. The manager sets the range of virtual local area networks that can communicate via the trunk link (Ahmad, 2002). Trunking is the best method. It was in comparison to creating physical relationships of various VLANs among the switches. In this case, between one switch and another there would have been six links, which would have wasted twelve ports. Further, it means that each of the individual links has different port numbers that make their management extremely difficult in case the network expands to accommodate twice or more the number of VLANS already existing. Use of dynamic trunking protocol has enabled new switches to the grid to automatically determine the other switches that belong to that trunk. As a result, it also changes its mode to being dynamic thus allowing communication among various VLANs (Aboelela & Peterson, 2012). The dynamic trunking protocol has minimized administrative overhead of having to configure every switch added to the network to support trunking especially with increasing network traffic. Figure 1.1 VLAN Structure for XUM showing all the three branches Reasons for using VLAN in XUM VLAN supports the control of broadcast. Switches isolate collision domains among the hosts attached to it and will forward traffic to a particular port. Similarly, VLANS make this concept more refined as they provide full isolation between the VLANS. A VLAN has both broadcast and multicast traffic in it thus the concept-bridging domain. VLANs provide Security. For instance individuals in an organization handling very sensitive data. These individuals will be in the same VLAN that will lock out other users from being able to access that sensitive information (Meter, 2012). In addition, inter-VLAN communication is only achievable via a router. The router has filtering and security functionality can be set to improve the security level. Protocols that cannot route cannot support one VLAN communicating with another VLAN. Their communication is in the same VLAN. VLANs have also led to better performance in our network. What has facilitated this is the capability to differentiate users according to their needs for example bandwidth? The switch now can assign users from one VLAN to another without necessarily having to cable again. You only need to adjust your configurations, which take a very short time to complete. XUM is a growing organization thus the option of using VLANs serves it right since it is software based thus allowing the management to adapt your network to relocations, additions and changes in the organization. How to reduce WAN Traffic To minimize traffic on WAN links, there has to be a broadcast domain. VLANs consist of switches thus ensuring that there are efficient transmissions since they move to users on the VLAN and not everybody in the network (Lazebnyy, 2013). As a result, the traffic to the router is minimal. The overall gain is reduced latency in the router. A VLAN can exist on any network thus according to our physical layout; you can allocate a VLAN to particular ports to separate the traffic. Further, there is need to turn off any logging on ACLs New IP Scheme From figure 1.1 From the diagram in figure 1.1 about VLAN Structure for XUM showing all the three branches, the intellectual property scheme falls into the following sections: Section 1: IP addressing for virtual local area network two (VLAN2). Virtual LAN2 covers the sales department with all the networking components in that ministry. It is inclusive of printers and servers for that ministry. The range is from 172.168.0.1 to 172.16.255.254. Section 2: IP addressing for virtual local area network three (VLAN3). VLAN3 covers the finance departments in entirety. It also accommodates the finance servers and printers. The range of IP addresses is from 172.17.0.1 to 172.17.255.254. Section 3: Covers the IP addressing for the human resource department. It is called VLAN4. It also contains servers and printers that are in the addressing scheme. Its IP range from 172.18.0.1 to 172.18.255.254 Section 4: Refers to IP addressing for VLAN 5, which accommodates the research and development department. All components in the unit are in the IP scheme. Most important is the servers and printers. The IP range is from 172.19.0.1 to 172.19.255.254. Section 5: covers the IP range for the management VLAN (VLAN6). The management VLAN is logs to the switches and manage the network remotely. It pertains to adding and deleting VLANs. The Internet Protocol here is from 172.16.20.1 to 172.16.255.254. VLAN 1 commonly referred to as the default VLAN 1 has not been given IP addresses for security reasons to avoid hackers and crackers from easily penetrating our system. The summarization of the IP ranges is below: Network From To VLAN 1 VLAN2 192.16.0.1 192.16.255.254 VLAN3 192.17.0.1 192.17.255.254 VLAN4 192.18.0.1 192.18.255.254 VLAN5 192.19.0.1 192.19.255.254 VLAN6 192.20.0.1 192.20.255.254 Assumptions made Every department has its servers given IP addresses within the pool of that VLAN dynamically to minimize the administrative costs incurred when implementing this infrastructure. XUM is a growing organization so that it is not possible to predict how soon the group could explode to surpass the existing number of IP addresses at the different branch regions. The IP addressing scheme chosen will cater for this expansion efficiently. Thus, the entire organization will have a new structure. All the domain controllers receive static IP addresses. Complete Addressing Table IP Address Host Names Machine Name 172.16.0.2 Sales File Server1 172.16.0.3 Sales File Server2 172.16.0.4 Sales Mail Server1 172.16.0.5 Sales Mail Server2 172.16.0.6 Sales Print Server1 172.16.0.7 Sales Print Server2 172.16.0.8 Sales DHCP Server1 172.16.0.9 Sales DHCP Server2 172.16.0.10 Sales DNS Server1 172.16.0.11 Sales DNS Server2 172.17.0.2 Finance File Server1 172.17.0.3 Finance File Server2 172.17.0.4 Finance Mail Server1 172.17.0.5 Finance Mail Server2 172.17.0.6 Finance Print Server1 172.17.0.7 Finance Print Server2 172.17.0.8 Finance DHCP Server1 172.17.0.9 Finance DHCP Server2 172.17.0.10 Finance DNS Server1 172.17.0.11 Finance DNS Server2 172.18.0.2 Hrm File Server1 172.18.0.3 Hrm File Server2 172.18.0.4 Hrm Mail Server1 172.18.0.5 Hrm Mail Server2 172.18.0.6 Hrm Print Server1 172.18.0.7 Hrm Print Server2 172.18.0.8 Hrm DHCP Server1 172.18.0.9 Hrm DHCP Server2 172.18.0.10 Hrm DNS Server1 172.19.0.11 Research DNS Server2 172.19.0.2 Research File Server1 172.19.0.3 Research File Server2 172.19.0.4 Research Mail Server1 172.19.0.5 Research Mail Server2 172.19.0.6 Research Print Server1 172.19.0.7 Research Print Server2 172.19.0.8 Research DHCP Server1 172.19.0.9 Research DHCP Server2 172.19.0.10 Research DNS Server1 172.19.0.11 Research DNS Server2 172.20.0.2 San switch 172.20.0.3 Houston Campus Switch 172.20.0.4 Houston Remote Office Switch 172.20.0.5 Denver Campus Switch 172.20.0.6 Denver Remote Office1 Switch 172.20.0.7 Denver Remote Office2 Switch 172.20.0.8 Denver Switch 172.20.0.9 Houston Switch 172.20.0.10 Core Switch Summary VLAN is a concept that involves components including machines that exist in one or more local area networks allowing them to communicate with each other. The local area network segments or the geographical location does not limit it. In this project, we have used VLAN to isolate traffic for the different departments in XUM. Further, it provides vital security to departmental data or privacy so that users in one VLAN cannot see what the others on the others are doing. It also aids in isolating network problems and speed up the process of troubleshooting such a network. VLAN also goes further to create flexible and scalable connections. Further, VLANs support broadcast control. Route summarization facilitated the reduction of routing tables in the network that is IP dependent like this one. It achieves this by bringing together many ways to form a single path. References Aboelela, E., & Peterson, L. (2012). Network simulation experiments manual. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann. Ahmad, K. (2002). Sourcebook of ATM and IP internetworking. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press. Lazebnyy, A. (2013). The Details of Virtual Contention Window Concept for 802.11 IBSS Wireless Local Area Network Mathematic Modeling. WCMC, 1(1), 7. doi:10.11648/j.wcmc.20130101.12 Meter, R. (2012). Quantum is networking and internetworking. IEEE Network, 26(4), 59-64. doi:10.1109/mnet.2012.6246754 Read More