Introduction
This paper is a proposal for Leonard Cooper Charter School for improving their network. The stakeholders of the system are facing a number of problems, especially since a new addition to the building was added. This proposal addresses each of the stakeholders' concerns and provides a combined solution for implementing in the system.
Network Improvement Proposal
One of the major concerns of the stakeholders is the problem with printing. There are over 50 printers in the building. Print jobs keep waiting in long queues. To solve this problem, a print server is recommended for installation. All the 50 printers can be connected to the print server to make them shared over the network. This will allow the print server distribute the print jobs to the appropriate printers with minimum number of waiting jobs in queues. A print server can be used to control the printers wirelessly and perform actions such as cancel a print job, print a job on a specific printer, reorder jobs, etc.
Another problem is the problem of collision in the network during the morning time when most of the users of the building are using the network. To avoid the collisions and make good use of the available bandwidth, the building network should be switch-based Ethernet LAN. For this, a 24-port switch is needed. One of the ports will be connected to the old wing backbone switch, and rest of the 23 ports will be connected to the 23 desktops in the classrooms. This will provide a network based on Star Topology. The problem the system is currently facing is possibly due to the bus topology currently implemented on the system.
Mr. Wingfield, IT Director, shared a concern about the slow connection between the two wing buildings. To overcome this problem, the twisted pair cable needs to be replaced with a 100Based-F fiber cable. The reason for this is that twisted pair cables, of even Category 6, provide good speeds up to a distance of 100 meters. But the distance between the two buildings is 120 meters. So, a fiber cable will be the best as it does not suffer any interference up to a distance of several kilometers. The cabling recommended for connecting the 24-port switch to the classrooms is Category 6 UTP 1000Base-T cable. This is because the twisted pair cable is good for connection within the building as it will not exceed 100 meters. Thus, we get a 1 Gigabit Ethernet connection between the old wing and new wing using the 24-port backbone switch. Further we have a capacity of 1 Gigabit over each of the 23 connections from this port. This connection will use CSMA/CD protocol, which will detect collisions and will not transmit damaged packets. Further since this is a random access protocol, at any time in the day, when other nodes are not using the links, one of the nodes can transmit the packets at the full rate of the connection. This solves the problem of Mr. Fischer, HVAC Tech, who wanted a high speed connection. Replacing his old 10 megabits connection, he will now have access to 1 Gigabit connection which is supported by his laptop's network card too.
Mr. Fischer wants a wireless connection. So, one of the ports from the 24-port switch coming to his room can be connected to a WiFi router, which will use a radio wireless media. The WiFi routers transmit the data through radio waves of the electromagnetic spectrum. This way, Mr. Fischer will not need to a cable coming from the jack in the wall. This also eliminates the restriction of staying in place when connected. He can roam around with his laptop within a range of several meters from the WiFi router.
Ms. Daniels, Principal, wants the facility of adding additional network devices to the classroom. For this, to the cable coming to the classroom, a 8-port switch can be connected which will allow adding 7 additional devices to be connected to the classroom. One of those ports can be connected to a WiFi router thus providing the facility of connecting wireless devices too, such as laptops of the students in the class.
Conclusion
The above proposal for improving the network connection in the new building addresses the concerns of all the stakeholders. The problem of managing the printers is solved by the use of a print server. The problem of collision, bottleneck in backbone connection and slow network performance is solved by using a CSMA/CD based Ethernet connection with a 1000Base-F fiber optic cable.