CNT4704 Final Project

A. The city of Hastings, KY wants to set up a secure WAN to connect all of their government buildings. They also want to provide free and secure wireless access to the residents that live within the downtown city limits (the free wireless access should provide access to the residents of local government services and general Internet access). The city currently uses leased lines through the local phone company to connect the 10 government buildings. They also want to provide access to the schools in the city; 5 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 2 high schools. The total student population is approximately 9,600. By setting up their own WAN they expect to save at least 50% over the cost of the leased lines that they currently utilize. Below is a map of the city with the government building locations, and the schools. The T1 lines, there is only 1 line that connects the buildings in the sequence shown (blue lines), cost $347 per month per connection (each building has at least 1 connection, some have 2 - each in and out is one connection). When you recommend a new solution, consider redundancy/fault tolerance, cost, and suitability for the city.

B. Below is a list of the hardware and software that is currently installed in their network:
a. City Hall is the "hub" for the network. It has 2 CISCO Layer 3 Switches that support 96 users (48 ports per switch), and 2 CISCO 5900 Routers, one is a backup.
b. The other sites have3 CISCO 24 port switches that supports approximately 50 users per site. Each site also has a CSU/DSU for the T1 line, and a CISCO 2900 router.
c. The city has 10 Dell Rack Mount Servers at City Hall, running Windows 2003 Server with Active Directory.
d. The other sites have 2 Dell Rack Mount Servers that each are running their own Active Directory Tree. The A.D. structure is NOT integrated across the network.
e. All offices are running Windows XP on the machines (total of 550 computers). They have held off on upgrading to Windows 7, but realized that they may need to upgrade the systems.
f. The city does not have wireless access except for inside City Hall, and it is restricted to employees only (uses WAP and each employee has a unique employee ID to login).

C. The WAN relies on the Internet provider (Comcast) for all of the TCP/IP configuration and uses DHCP servers to assign local addresses to the computers.

D. Your job, is to determine the following:
a. What type of media (cable, could be wireless) could the city use to connect the sites. The sites are no more than ½ mile away from each other.
b. What hardware upgrades would they need, and would you suggest to the network (both at the LAN and WAN level).
c. What would you recommend that the city uses for its Wireless WAN access across the 10 mile radius of the city center (which encompasses all of the buildings in the diagram)? Make sure to show the coverage, including a site survey (once again, you will have to investigate coverage of each wireless router).
d. When recommending equipment for the wireless public network, what type of configuration would you recommend?
e. Come up with a price list for the project. Assume that consulting costs are $150 per hour, and installation and configuration costs are $100 per hour. Estimate the number of hours (you will need to guess) that it would take to implement your solution, be very specific on the number of hours for each task, including planning.
f. Write up your recommendations in report format, with diagrams of the changes and recommendations. Include equipment lists, software upgrades that you recommend, etc. Your report MUST include a Gantt chart, complete expense report (with ROI, payback, etc), and alternatives (don't just list 1 solution).
g. The final report should be about 10 pages long (plus or minus 2 pages).
h. You may work in groups NO larger than 3! I will let you pick your groups, but if you don't decide quickly, then I will randomly assign you to a group by the end of the second week.