The Floor Plans Equipment

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

In this Assignment a report had to be produced with a specification set out by a client, Rockpool and Fife college, who had just built a new Creative Media building and wanting an IT infrastructure built around the main University Campus.

Outline

The following departments are as followed:

Administration Staff

Curriculum Staff

Student Hosts

VoIP Phones

The administration staff has a total of 19 people, which work on the first floor of the building. These are split up by the following:

Student records = 7

Finance = 6 TOTALS = 19

Student services = 6

They will have access to the following equipment to support them in their work:

VoIP Phones = 19

Printers = 3 TOTALS = 24

Servers = 2

Note: Finance have only access to one server and only finance staff are allowed to use this server with the exception of the Network manager and technician who can have access. Student records and Student services share the same server again the Network manager and Technician can have access. And this is going to remain the same for the next five years.

The Curriculum staff has a total of 9 people, which work on the first floor of the building. These are split up by the following:

Academic staff = 6

Curriculum manager = 1

Network manager = 1 TOTALS = 9

Technician = 1

They will have access to the following equipment:

VoIP Phones = 9

Printers = 9 TOTALS = 23 + 5 for 100% growth

Servers = 5

Note: The Curriculum manager and Academic staff will share 5 servers and only they will use these with the exception of the Network manager and the Technician. The Curriculum department servers are expecting a 100% growth within the next five years.

There will be 300 Students host who can have access to the following equipment:

VoIP Phones = 4

Printers = 6

Projectors = 7 TOTAL = 102

PC’s = 85

The students will occupy the ground floor of the building which will consist of VoIP phones, PC’s, Printers and projectors. There are four meeting/seminar rooms which will be available to the students through bookings on first floor.

There will be a wireless network implemented for 50 hosts to accommodate for the purpose of general internet and email access. Each wireless router will be confined to an IEEE 802.11 g protocol and be encrypted to WPA 2 security standards.

VoIP phones will be switchable meaning that an end device i.e. a PC can be plugged into it. When VLAN is implemented the phone will be able to tag voice and data spontaneously.

Analogue calls are converted into data packets over the Internet or Private networks

Landlines and mobiles are reachable. Calls can also be made to PC to PC

(Cisco, 2013).

Procedure

There are many devices i.e. servers, printers etc. that must only be access by certain departments or staff. Due to this the approach to this problem will lead to the implementation of VLAN and trunking technologies. Other factors that need to be taken into consideration are:

Security

The placement of switches, routers servers, etc. in a secure area where only permitted personnel are allowed access.

Bandwidth

Routers and core, Distribution switching will require more bandwidth because these are backbone network devices which require a fast connection.

Redundancy

This is required for device failure (switching) to provide another means of connection so the network can remain up.

Protection against natural disaster

The location of sensitive equipment is vital for protection against, flooding, fire and cooling

VLANS and Trunking

VLAN’s are a collection of devices that are grouped together in a single broadcast domain, for multiple VLANS on multiple switches to communicate along a single link you need to use Trunking. Trunking allows information from multiple VLAN’s to be carried along one single link between switches. On the switch, its ports can either be configured as a Trunk port or Access port, Access port carries traffic that comes from the only VLAN assigned to that port. A Trunk port is a member of all the VLAN’s on that switch and carries traffic for all the VLAN’s between the switches. A Trunk port must be able to separate the traffic for all the multiple VLAN’s and it does this by tagging and this tagging mechanism is the IEEE 802.1q protocol (Cisco, 2013).

Equipment

Router

Cisco 3900 series is routers of choice because it supports 10 GB fibre optic modules which can be added to give the 3 fibre link which are needed for fast backbone connection. This Router can give upgradability and performance when it is needed and supports lots of network protocols if the occasion arises (Cisco, 2013).

Switches

Access Switch:

The choice of Switch is a Cisco 24 port small business 500 series; these switches provide connection for the network devices to the network. The switches provide (PoE) Power over Ethernet for the VoIP phones which will be used throughout the building in all the departments and provide good features such as:

QoS (Quality of Service) which provides a priority network for video and voice when using the cisco discovery protocol. When an IP Phone is plugged into the network the switch automatically configures the device to the right VLAN.

Provides a fast Ethernet, Gigabit, and an optional 10 Gigabit connection. Most devices support the fast Ethernet but if the need for better bandwidth, this switch can support it.

Strong security features such as ACL’s (Access Control Lists) and VLAN’s (Virtual Local Area Networks) This can separate the network to their own domains (departments) so only certain groups can used certain devices (servers, printers, etc.) allocated to that VLAN.

Supports IPv6 making this switch future proof (Cisco, 2013).

A 24 port switch is preferred because it can give more redundancy if you have more switches.

Distribution Switch:

The choice of switch chosen for this task is a 24 port Cisco catalyst 4500 series. These switches take some of the strain off the access switches and provide security within a network. This switch provide a good bandwidth (1.6 Terabyte) and deliver a 500 Mpps (Mega packets per second) which is essential for fast transfer of data further up the switching hierarchy. Other important features include:

It scales up well with copper gigabit ports, fibre gigabit ports and the added advantage of a 10 gigabit ports which for fast, good and reliable connections this is essential.

Good security features

Hot swappable components so the network can remain up (Cisco, 2013).

With this switch it can provide a fibre connection to other switches which this build, should it require it.

Core Switch:

Because this switch forms the backbone of the network the cisco 6500 series is the choice of switch to do this job; this is a high performance switch which is needed for the network and server access, these switches are purely for speed and data transfer for the network.

It is a high port density switch which supports both fast Ethernet and gigabit Ethernet

Supports 10 gigabit Ethernet through module upgrades

Has good firewall security

This switch is needed for the fast access, throughput, bandwidth of data, this is important for the network so it can perform quickly and efficiently (Cisco, 2013).

Appendices

Floor Plans Cabling

The cabling will be a CAT 6 UTP (Unshielded) or STP (Shielded) depending where the cabling is going to be routed i.e. along the walls will be unshielded cabling and cabling going along the ceiling will be shielded to be protected from interference . This applies for all cabling that cannot the routed along walls or through the ceiling, cabling that needs to reach equipment that is centrally positioned will be cabled along the floor via floor coverings, which will then be connected into purposed built floor sockets and the device that needs to be connected will connect via the floor socket. The uplinks that enter the building, all three of them, are 10 Gb Ethernet connections for fast and reliable connection for data to be carried along into the main MDF which is in the storage area of the ground floor for security and protection purposes.

Floor Plans Equipment

The equipment, router, server and switches have been placed in a storage area to protect it from malicious damage. The room is dark and has air conditioning to keep the equipment working at operational temperatures. The ground floor will mainly be where students will study, but on the first floor, there is a seminar room which can be booked and students can have the use of VoIP phones, printers, etc. The student servers are placed in the storage room so to keep distances short for data to travel .All the Administration and curriculum staff are based on the first floor and the servers that serve theses departments are on the same floor again this is for security, protection purposes and for fast data transfer.

Wireless access points are positioned to give good coverage; this is why it is important where they have been placed in the building.

Wireless RF (Radio Frequency) signals weaken as they move away from their source so it is important that the coverage interconnects with one another to make a continual connection throughout the building. It is also important that the wireless access points use different channels to transmit. Wireless IEEE 802.11a, b, g, n protocols transmits on the 2.4 GHz band and it is broken down into 13 channels. So that there is no interference with each wireless point it is recommended that there should not be an overlap of channels but a separation of 5 channels .e.g. one wireless point should be on channel 5 and another wireless point should be on channel 10. The main security protocol on wireless is WPA2 this is the standard of the IEEE 802.11i for WLAN authentication.

In the topology shown it gives the layout of the network. The Core switches are trunked to one another and also to the router. The servers are connected to the core switches to cope with high usage. There are 4 distribution switches, one for redundancy, which are trunked to the core switches which this makes up the backbone of the network. The access switches can provide means for a VLAN network to exist for each department, so that they alone have access to the devices that they are allowed to use.

The addressing scheme allows for every device to be connected and the extra 5 servers that are needed for the curriculum staff it also caters for future expansion of the network which may be needed if more staff or students join the campus.