Wide Area Networking Technologies

London College of Education (LCE) is a Higher Education (HE) institution offering a wide range of academic qualifications to a diverse student population in London, United Kingdom. Their motto is “Education studies Power”. By offering a wide range of academic qualifications to a wider community, they believe that they will empower a generation to make a success of themselves. Due to the recent high demand for higher education worldwide, LCE has decided to expand its operations to include Africa, Eastern Europe, and The Caribbean.

They have recently established new sites (campuses) in Lagos, Nigeria as their African Headquarters, Warsaw, Poland as their Eastern Europe Headquarters, and Kingston, Jamaica as their Caribbean Headquarters together with their main Headquarters in London, United Kingdom. Each location has a fully functioning network with various departments operating each site. All the sites are interconnected by dedicated Routers to enable greater network security, reliability, and performance.

London HQ:

CEO’s Office, HR & Marketing, IT Services, Academic Departments, Registry, Student Services, and IT Labs

Logos HQ; Warsaw HQ; Kingston HQ:

Each has the following; Head of Region, HR & Marketing, IT Services, Academic Departments, Registry, Student Services, and IT Labs

Each location should have the capability to support WAN infrastructure which includes, BUT NOT LIMITED to access to the Internet, PCs, laptops, Tablets, IP telephone, printers, Lab PCs, Staff PCs, and a fully functional IT Room, etc.

Important Issues to consider:

∙Security, reliability, confidentiality, and personal performance are very important to LCE as it manages its own global data network to ensure that data being transmitted over the network is secure.

∙Clients and employees should be able to communicate at a low cost using IP phones. Therefore the network hardware connectivity should be of high standards and current.

∙Since LCE has HQ offices in different locations around the world, LCE wishes to create a private corporate network that is able to connect these sites together and transport traffic of different types (both data and

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telephone calls) between them. In order to fully run its operations in all locations, the Management has decided to employ a Network Manager to plan, design, configure, implement and test the Wide Area Networking (WAN) in all sites.

TASK 1 (LO1: 1.1, 1.2 and M1) Interim Deadline (6th October 2014) Word Limit (600-1,000 with diagrams) (Formative Assessment in Week 3)

∙Critically evaluate the following WAN technologies; dial-up, broadband, Frame Relay (FR), ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), MPLS (Multiprotocol Layer Switching), interior routing protocols, exterior routing, static routing, routers, layer 2 aggregators, servers, cabling systems, modems, transceivers, satellite uplinks, 3G, 4G, 5G, and VPN concentrators

∙Critically analyze the following WAN traffic-intensive services and their performance: quality of service management eg DSCP (Differentiated Service Code Point), IP precedence, queues, base rules, congestion management; quality of service need eg Voice over IP, video streaming, and audio streaming

∙Critically evaluate the importance of Quality of Service (QoS) in network design with particular reference to VoIP, video streaming, and audio streaming.

HINT:

Your answer should include detailed explanations of each of the above with relevant diagrams to support your explanations.

TASK 2 (LO1: 1.3, 1.4 and D1 ) Interim Deadline (20th October 2014) Word Limit (600-1,000 with diagrams)

∙Critically evaluate the following WAN security; MD5 hash (Message-Digest algorithm 5), broadcast reduction, filters, traffic rules, firewalls, access control lists, directed updates, tunneling

∙Critically evaluate the importance of trust systems in WAN which include trust of intermediary system, the trust of remote systems, and trust of networks on WAN

∙Critically evaluate the importance of Security in network design with particular reference to MD5, Firewalls, Access Control List, and IP Address Filtering

HINT:

Your answer should include detailed explanations of each of the above with relevant diagrams to support your explanations.

TASK 3 (LO2: 2.1, 2.2, M2 and D2) Interim Deadline (3rd November 2014) Word Limit (600-1,200with diagrams) (Formative Assessment in Week 7)

∙Using Microsoft Word, plan, design, and evaluate the number of devices, users, bandwidth (load balancing), applications (software), scalability (future growth), technology (network design), and security (protocols, authentication, and tunneling).

∙Your answer should include a spreadsheet detailing the costing of your network & PC hardware (do not include details of the labor charges for installation). You may assume Cat5e (or higher specification) cable costs 20p per meter and FO cable costs £2.00 per meter (all types). Include a costing for the Internet connection from your ISP.

∙Conduct a Subnetting Planning for LCE WAN

∙Conduct an IP Addressing Planning for LCE WAN

HINT:

Your answer should include detailed explanations of each of the above with relevant diagrams to support your explanations. See More About: Numerous Centuries Before Christopher Columbus

TASK 3 FEEDBACK FORM

TASK 4 (LO3: 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, M3 and D3) Interim Deadline (17th November 2014) Word Limit (600-

1,000 with diagrams) (Formative Assessment in Week 9)

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∙Using the plan designed in TASK 2 above, now use Cisco Packet Tracer to build and test your WAN

∙Implement network security on the WAN

∙Configure all your devices, including DNS, DHCP, IP Addressing, Router Configuration, Workstation Configuration, IP Phone Configuration, Printer Configuration, Internet connection

∙Critically Review and Test your WAN and provide individual screen dumps for each particular device

in each Region/Network

HINT:

Your answer should include detailed explanations of each of the above with relevant diagrams to support your explanations.

TASK 4 FEEDBACK FORM

TASK 5 (LO4: 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) Interim Deadline (1st December 2014) Word Limit (600-1,000 with diagrams) (Formative Assessment in Week 11)

∙Critically analyze your WAN performance with particular reference to network monitoring tools, user access, traffic analysis, bandwidth monitoring, checking configuration, checking rules to improve security, reliability, and performance.

∙Resolve any issues using a troubleshooting methodology

∙Critically evaluate your whole project/design

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Resources

1.Course notes

2.Recommended learning textbooks:

a)Textbooks:

Reid A – WAN Technologies CCNA 4 Companion Guide (Cisco Press, 2006) ISBN-10: 1587131722

4.Software:

a)Cisco Packet Tracer

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Achievement Summary