Network Design for non-adjacent Floors - Assignment Example

Network Design for non-adjacent Floors Abstract In the design of this network, many considerations are put into place to avoid interfering with the tenant on floor four while minimizing the costs of the system. The design of the system will highly depend on the construction and the structuring of this building. However, to ensure that there is the minimum material used, the junction of the network wire from the fifth floor is vertically in line to that on the third floor. The equipment’s required are one router, two switches, cat5 twisted cable, servers, six servers and a firewall. Each department will have a switch to link the workstations and a printer. Each department is in the connection to a central switch on that floor before connecting to the router in the field level. The router is in the context of the external wide area network via a firewall. The firewall will be vital in filtering traffic from outside. The information technology department will host the six servers namely: file server, mail server, print server, web server, DHCP server and the DNS servers. The design has a number of security challenges posed by the non-adjacent floors. Employees will be organized according to the four departments namely: Information technology department, sales, accounting, finance, and human resource department. Different departments will be on virtual local area networks to beef up the security of individual unit’s data. The general design will consider factors such as the scalability of the network to accommodate increasing numbers of staff. Further, security and means of recovering from a disaster in case one occurs is of utmost concern. Introduction The network diagram for the business appears in figure 1 below. Figure 1: Network diagram for non-adjacent floors The greatest challenges in networking non-adjacent levels include cabling between the two floors. To run a cable from the third floor to the fifth floor will either involve running the cable outside the walls or inside the room. It will, therefore, call upon the management to request the tenant in the fourth floor to allow the running of cables through their floor. However, this comes with many challenges. First, the tenant may decline which means that the management may incur more to run the cables outside and ensure that it is secure. Accepting to run the cables through the floor poses a greater challenge. It leaves a vast security loophole. The concerned person my tap directly into our network thus giving them accessibility to our network. Depending on whom they are, the organizations data is at risk of being exposed to third parties who may end up using it for their reasons. It may include selling such information to the competitor business that may render the company useless in the market. Cabling from outside the wall may be dangerous depending on the structure of the building. On other cases, it may require replacement of the cable from the third floor to the fifth floor because of wear and tear after a short while (Katsambas & Kanellopoulos, 2004). The latter case compromises on the uptime needs of the organization. Depending on the activity running on the fourth floor, the signal may encounter interference. In such a situation, processing of activities may take longer than initially estimated. These delays may compromise the delivery of duties by the organization causing it to loose opportunities from partner companies. In other cases, there might be an extra cost incurred to minimize such interference and bring the speeds to the expected levels. Such scenarios depend on the actual situation at hand. The cable distance before reaching the fifth floor may limit the speed of connection. For instance, the ideal situation may require that the cable cover a longer distance to cater for the interests of all the parties in play. In accomplishing this, the distance may be exaggerated to interfere with the typical connection. To successfully solve the above case, we need a device to boost the signal that increases our expenditure. In other cases, it may not be readily available which means that we bear with the slow connection. Other considerations include the physical security measures. As a result, the organization needs to formulate suitable regulations, way of contact and policies to govern it (Social networking study shows cyber crime risk, 2006). It should cover fire in the building and electrical faults. The organization has to budget for emergency power in case the building does not offer that. Such power goes in to cater for security systems that include CCTV cameras, alarms and electric bells. Proper housing policies stipulated considerers this, but it is something we cannot ignore. Adjustments made to the building may interfere with the way we control personnel accessing the building. Unauthorized persons may take advantage of such a scenario to cause a lot of harm to the organization. The location of the network cabinets especially on the fifth floor where there are networking equipments and many servers should provide physical and protection for the gadgets. The location and design should consider physical damage, interference from electrical and electromagnetic force. IT should also look at the temperature changes, humidity and exposure to ultraviolet radiation. It also analyzes the possibility of contaminants critically and to what extent. These include dust and fluids. The structure allows ease of accessibility (Vacca, 2014). The idea is to enable the maintenance of the cabling system, and components associated. Air condition and cooling requirements are very critical here. It should cater for increasing processing speeds especially with most equipments being IP enabled. The temperature and humidity require control to provide continuous operation. Lighting of the server room should be well spread and to a larger extend optimum. Conclusion The entire security of the organization runs all the way to the planning stage of the facility. Proper design and structuring of the location will be handy in reducing the risk of damages that could compromise the network. Further, the threat spreads to the surrounding of the concerned organization. Physical risks are imminent especially in our case where cables have to be run either outside or through the tenant on the fourth floor. Software threats and hacking are also likely to occur when faced with such a situation. It is, therefore, key for ICT based organizations to incorporate information security. References ‘Social networking’ study shows cybercrime risk. (2006). Network Security, 2006(11), 2. Doi: 10.1016/s1353-4858(06)70448-2 Katsambas, V., & Kanellopoulos, J. (2004). A model for the estimation of the carrier-to-noise plus total interference ratio between two adjacent dual polarized satellite links sharing the same frequency band. Int. J. Satell. Commun Network. 23(1), 77-90. doi:10.1002/sat.808 Vacca, J. (2014). Network and system security. Amsterdam: Syngress. Read More