Local Area Networking Technologies - Assignment Example

Local Area Networking Technologies College: Introduction Sports Authority at the Mile high is a modern stadium sports stadium in the city of Colorado owned by the Metropolitan Stadium District and managed by Stadium Management Company. The stadium size encompasses a total of 1.8million square feet and it can hold a capacity crowd of 76,125 on five level of sitting and has 144 luxury suites, 8,200 club seats and 144 luxury suites. With 10 public entrances, 11 passenger and 2 freight elevators the stadium is a modern design architect this is ideal for the elderly guests who are unable to use the stairs to the concourse. The only modern technology the stadium has adopted is the Closed Captioning Devices and the banner signs light emitting diodes display. The closed captioning devices are designed for the deaf guests and they normally operate via mobile phones. The devices transmit the signal through the stadium public address system. The only downgrade of the closed captioning technology is that the guests access the sever site (mobileCap.net) by using their own mobile carrier network. The stadium management has not provided a network connection within the arena. This project entails about installing a local area Network infrastructure for the stadium, in order to support the lifestyle of sharing rich content among friends using smart phones as well as to counteract the closed captioning connectivity problem, the network connectivity will also reduce the areas covered by access point when guests tries to access the internet by providing high capacity and stable services. Task 1 The LAN Network required for the stadium should be highly secured by keeping the stadiums own data and the guests data separate as well as offering secure wireless connections to the event organizers in the stadium. The ideal network should also be accessible through mobile phones or tablets. 1.1 The works stadium’s work stations should effectively communicate with one another without the requirements of accessing a gateway. This will be done by ensuring that the IP connections are established in the ARPing and packets be directly sent to the required station. The Network will be defined using the Virtual LANs where by the different access points in the stadium will have a switch ports embedded in the various switches as shown in the diagram 1. By doing this, the administration server and the guest server will be separated without using the routers. S VLAN A VLAN b VLAN A Switch VLAN A VLAN C Switch VLAN B In this design a virtual LAN will be distributed across the network. From the diagram, the path VLAN B will connect to a single broadcast domain. The guest network will be segmented to a different and separate VLAN mounted on an IP subnet that is different from the staff VLANs in order to ensure the stadiums own data does not mix with the guests. 1.2 Modern devices such as tablets and Notebooks will require unique LAN connectivity comprising of different practices. The designed network should have small cell size and have average coverage in order to house high bandwidth demands. The access points will be mounted at close range and evenly spaced in order to minimize the distance travelled from the access point to the portable device and to increase the surface area for the access points respectively. In ensuring the above criteria are met, we first analyze the different LAN technologies available. Attached resource computing network (ARCnet), developed by Data point Corporation in 1997 requires a control mechanism where a station has to have a token before transmitting. ARCnet uses RG-62 coaxial cable. The transmission is broadcasted by one network server to different station. With a 5 MHZ bandwidth and 2.5MHZ, two signals are used in order to detect passage of single bit. The network is most ideal for smaller office and manufacturing environments. The network is not ideal for use in areas where there is high number of expected internet connectivity users like stadium. Ethernet Developed by Xerox Corporation, Ethernet is the most widely technology for Local Area Network. The first Ethernet was made to transmit through a huge cable with a 5mm in radius. With increased technology it was upgraded to use RG-58 with 0.25mm in diameter. Ethernet follows a bus technology where all the transmitting receivers and stations are connected to coaxial cable. The cables run from station to station and work as the interface between the NIC and receiver. Ethernet uses baseband transmission with the transmission broadcasted over the network using Manchester encoding. This method for networking is mostly used because only the intended stations will receive the signal moreover Ethernet transmission speed is only 10Mbps. Source (fp7-persuit.eu) Ethernet topology Token ring This is a very robust and high faulting tolerant LAN owned by IBM. This technology is mostly used for stations which require same network access as it allows simple expansion with limited performance. The technology is designed to operate from 4 to 16Mbps over a 150 hertz cable. The technology operates by taking ring flows using a star wired ring topology. In the work station, each single station is connected to a central unit which links all the stations. Token ring is widely used in manufacturing companies because it has the ability to configure itself when a network station fails. The process works by creating a token by one station on the network transmitter and the network receiver. Advantage of a token ring technology is the Administrator can determine the likely hood of a station trying to possess a token based on a number of stations on the ring. Token ring transmission, only one station is able to transmit at a time. With 4Mbps to 16Mbps at its disposal the mechanism works by passing token loads from a token, the token loads data then creates a frame, the destination frame recognizes the signal and reads the frame. Destination station then returns the frame to the network in order to circulate and then the station generates transmission as the frame passes from station to station. (CCNA Discovery) Source (Stockton.edu) Token ring topology 1.3 After various analyses, Ethernet technology would be the most ideal for the stadium as it guarantees unlimited interconnection. Ethernet connectivity is already used in more than 85% of the world’s local area connected personal computers and workstations. Ethernet is easy to implement and has limited maintenance fee as well as it provides wide range for topological flexibility for different network connectivity’s. Ethernet network has a gap free security with a wireless fire wall which can stop an attack at layer 3 or layer 2 and can offer the required technology to the stadium management as it has the ability to monitor and protect the digital input and output as well as securing the signal on the IP network. Task 2 Mile high sports authority can hold more than 72,000 people and providing an excellent experience in such a packed venue for both fans and press require state of the art technology in order to ensure an adequate signal is available to all areas around the arena. The considerations design for the ultimate signal quality includes the use of high gain antennas, antenna orientation either to be mounted vertically or horizontally as well as the antennae elevation. For this kind of building where an excellent signal is required, the distance from the AP to client should be limited. High gain antennas and high power setting is required to achieve maximum signal range as well as capacity range should also be considered in order to limit the targeted area. Failure to this, the signal will be accessible as far as 400m distance away from the stadium. In order to balance the signal capacity and signal coverage, 3D antenna pattern visualizations design techniques is to be considered. To determine how many access points are near the bridge AP density is determined in order to reduce channel overlap as well as interference. The AP density for Mile high stadium can go up to 300 clients per frequency. Moreover in order to maximize average output for each client the number of transmitting clients should be less than 802.11AP. The luxury VIP sections will require more coverage and this will be achieved by mounting access points either in the ceiling or under the seats. To minimize radio overlap, few antennas will be placed on the roof beams. Signal dispersion from the roof will deliver a line of sight of 30 to 50 feet signal on the targeted crowd. The whole stadium will consist of 16 Cisco APs, with 4 at one part of the stadium, 4 on other part of the opposite side. The remaining 8 will be mounted at the entrance, on the beam and under the seats. Diagram 1 The diagram shows the various locations of the access point From the diagram above the green circled area shows the APs mounted locations. Different APs will be placed in the lower and upper sections. To minimize signal interference between the APs the lower section antennas will be placed under the seats as shown the diagram 2 below (the green circled area). Diagram 2 Location of one Access point (mounted under a seat) The upper deck antennas will be mounted on the roof beams and be aimed to match the gradient of the stadium seats in order to maximize coverage and reduce interference as shown in diagram iii .In order to reduce multipath distortion, the upper deck will be mounted with directional rooftop. The antennas will only pick signals directly from the transmitter and reject any signal from either its side. Horizontal cabling used will be the category 5e, the category 5e cable can support data speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. The wiring standards will be the TIA 568B terminations in order to support speed data up to 1000Mb/s. The cabling for the stadium will be more than 90 meters from the access layer. If network signal in the access points is not good, a new wiring closet will be put up. Diagram 3 APs mounted on the roof beam Diagram 4 shows the connection mapping network which represent the switches, hubs, servers as well as routers on a network. On graphical presentation the routers, the diagram 4 below show how the Router connections will be in the switched network. The design shows interconnection between switches, hubs, routers and servers. Router connections in the switched network Various devices will be required for a state of the art design. Uninterruptible power supply- UPS will be ideal for switches connected to the administrator or the management servers in order to offer power back-up in times of power failure. The UPS will be connected to the wireless access points, since the network users will be using battery powered devices. For the switches RFS 7000 switch will be used as the device provides a single platform for delivering high user data together with its high security, resiliency and scalability. The device efficiency will minimize the cost of data contents. The Access ports and the access points, AP 300 from Motorola will be ideal as they work conjunction with the RFS 7000 switches and can be adoptable as either layer 3 or layer 2. The device delivers a high signal connectivity using its internal mounted signal. Bridges and client adapters, LA 5127 cards will provide connectivity to the stadium. The device will be ideal as it will deliver powerful wireless connectivity to both the stadium guests and the staff crew. 2.2 For the switches, Access Ports, Bridges and Client Adapters, the supplier will by either Motorola or Cisco networks. Comparing the selling price from the two companies, Motorola sells the Bridges/ client adapters at a cheaper price when compared to Cisco. The Motorola RFS 7000 LAN retails at $ 9, 540.18 the stadium will require a total of 30 switches. This will total to $286,205.4 The AP300 Access Ports from Motorola retails at $56.99*30 in total the company will supply access ports amounting to $ 1709.7. The bridge and client adapters will be supplied by Cisco together with network. Task 3 On IP address assignment, the IP will be assigned to a host permanently. The internet service provider will assign a public IPv4 to the Customer premises equipment. The Customer premise network will then assign the signal to the IPv4 on the router to the acting as gateway by directing the addresses to a single public address. In order to ensure the several access points receive a straight line signal, the internet service provider will allocate a group of IPv4 addresses to the Customer premises equipment to the clients. The address used by the service provider will act as the universal router for the outgoing traffic. The premise equipment will select the same address then leave the rest for the LAN Clients. Because the network will be private on the staff offices and public on the guest area, a CD router will be used to create a configuration network with private address and public address on different interfaces each. Defining the Domain name, the host will translate the domain name system to IP addresses. Due to the inconvenience of static addresses in locating servers, they will not be implemented using the static method. On this design, the IP address will be configured dynamically on the network. The dynamic method will be used because it eliminates the burden of assigning static addresses to the devices on the network channel. The dynamic method will also allow many portable devices to be connected to the network. 3.2 In connecting wireless access onto windows operating system, the personell will first install the software driver and utilities. The user then right clicks on the wireless icon on the system interface to select the ‘view wireless networks’ Wireless configuring in windows Xp( Cisco) If the preferred network is not displayed on the available networks, under the preferred network, click the wireless properties then feed in the network name. To enable the wireless configuration, select the ‘use windows to configure my wireless network settings as shown in screen shot below. Wireless selection interface Click on the authentication Tab and set the type protected EAP then click on the authentication box to authenticate. On the authentication tab, click on the properties button and check the ‘enable Fast reconnect. Then select the secure password (EAP-MSCHAP v2) EAP dialog box Click the ‘OK button till the ‘wireless network connection properties page is seen. Select the wireless networks tab then click the advanced button. The device should now configure to the wireless network. 3.3 In order to check if the network is working properly, a ping should be send to working sites such as the bing.com. This would be done by first running the command prompt then type the Command ping bind.com. The results should show; the ping statistics, the packets send and the round trip times. A file can be sent over the network then printed on another connected device through the same channel. Task 4 In any wireless connection some users may find a way to sub pass the firewall and start accessing the network without the Administrator authority. In order to avoid sniffing from hackers, network monitoring tools should be used. Protection against illegal access to the network can be prevented by use of Tools such as ArpWatch version 2.1a. The tool will send a notification message to the Administrator when address resolution protocol requests are detected. This will prompt the administrator to take quick and legal actions if there is hack to the network. ArpWatch works by generating a log of the detected pairing of IP addresses. The tool is manufactured by Lawrence Berkely national Laboratory Network based at California, licensed by the 3 clause BSD and retails at $19.99 from the Amazon store. The tool keeps the track of IP address and scans ARP files. When a suspicious activity is detected, it sends the suspicious process to the chosen email address after login the process to the syslog. The tool is also ideal for detecting network hack as it also gives log of every guest accessing the network moreover an administrator can easily generate graphs and reports by processing the emailed logs. 4.1 Troubleshooting the Cisco network will require the configuration settings for the entire network, inclusive of the WEP and IP addresses. Link status meter is used for checking various wirelesses significant. The meter informs the administrator when the AP is experiencing power failure, when the Service Set Identifier is incorrectly configured or when the signal from the AP to the Network Interface Controller is poor such that a connection cannot be established. When the problem is analyzed and resolved, the signal of the network is indicated on the Admin panel, either poor, good or Excellent. WLANs covering a busy area like the stadium should be installed using the Dynamic Host Configuration protocol (DHCP). This will minimize administrator workforce as it automatically assigns the IP addresses of the host. When a control station is not able to retrieve an IP address ports screen, previously allocated address can be retained. Use of Network ports screen assists in reporting errors as well as traffic volumes for the wireless interfaces and the network, as both interfaces are crucial in diagnosis when researching a connectivity problem. 4.2 The developed network, connectivity availability and capacity issues can be resolved by efficient planning and testing. Security threats imposed on a network can be counteracted by use of firewalls and proper policies (Stan Kiyota 2001). The Arpwatch tool can be used on resolving LAN issues as it generates the log of the observed pairing of the IP addresses. The Administrator can detect a problem on the network by analyzing the forwarded email when certain changes are done on the network. 4.3 Frequency hopping in a wireless technology results to use of less power and reduction in cost of maintenance. IP infrequencies and LAN packet loss can adversely affect application performance. Use of F5’s TCP can leverage optimization in various client and server systems. The stack contains technology that affects the LAN efficiencies. In high speed LANs, F5’scan increase the buffer size and will detect any low latency. When a client is experiencing low speed LAN, the TCP stack will analyze and estimate the bandwidth thus limiting packet loss. (Stan Kiyota 2001) Conclusion If the analyzed LAN design and configuration were implemented, guest will have enhanced game experience as the guests will use Smartphone and tablets for free internet access. Simplified deployment as well as ongoing performance will be achieved using the mounted resource management feature. The stadium will also be in an ideal spot to increase revenues by promoting ticket sales and merchandise. Bibliography Noble, E. Cunningham Jr. 2007. Millenium stadiuma Nation.1st ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Eric Ouellet Robert Pajen Arthur Pfund, Ron Pfund, Tim Blankenship Cisco wireless LAN http://www.nettech.in. 27th April 2014 Cisco Networking academy CCNA Discovery 3 available from http://www.mywccc.org. 27th April 2014 Aruba stadium available fromhttp://www.Arubanetworks.com. 27th April 2014 Gunjan, Samtani Dimple Sadhwani. Web Services and Application Frameworks. http://www. noaa.gov. Joel Scambray, Stuart McClure, George Kurtz. 2001 “Hacking Exposed 2nd Edition” Ivan Arce, Maximiliano Caceres. Core Security Tecnologies. 2001 "Automatin Penetration Tests: A new challenge for the IS industry?" Stan Kiyota, 2001 “Creating an Integrated Internal and E-Business Information Security Architecture” Corporate Systems Reto E. Haeni. The George Washington University. Firewall Penetration Testin. Read More