Networking Fundamentals Assignment

Purpose of the assessment:

The purpose of this assignment is to develop skills required to design practically installable networks that address the unique requirements of clients.

Description of the assessment:

1. Background

This is a group assignment, with 2-4 members in each group depending on the class size. Your Lecturer will decide about the Group size. Assume that your group has been recruited by ‘Koala Vitamins Inc', as described in the case study below, for developing a network design proposal that facilitates the services to its national and international customers and meets the need of its staff.

2. Requirements

For this assignment, you need to complete the following task:

-Prepare a network design proposal in your own words addressing the requirements of Koala Vitamins Inc. You need to identify the requirements in terms of networking facilities from studying the case as given below.

-You have to submit a group report and specify each individual group member's contribution in front page.

Detailed information on what to submit is provided following the case study.

3. Case Study

Koala Vitamins Inc. is a reputed firm with several Vitamins shops that provides different types of Vitamin sale services, including international delivery. The shop has four (4) major branches in Australia in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane to capture a large number of customers in the area. In addition to providing Vitamin sale services in-store, they also have web-based ordering facility for national and international customers. The orders can be paid for online by using Visa, Mastercard credit cards, or by using PayPal or Western Union.

Koala Vitamins Inc. gets a significant portion of their orders through their on-line ordering facilities from non-English speaking countries. Web-based orders (online) get stored in their central file server(s), which is located in Sydney, but should be accessible from any branch using appropriate networking technologies. The security and reliability of their file and web servers is of high importance.

Furthermore, the servers need to be protected from malicious computer attacks and unauthorized access. Facility to carry out audit checks needs to be provided as well so as to keep track of the exact activity along with the date and time at which an employee of Koala Vitamins carried out a computer system based activity. The activity could include doing task(s) such as installation of new software, changes in Webpage etc.

The web server is also located in the Sydney in the same location as the file server(s), to host a homepage for the business. As many customers need to seek clarification about Vitamins and delivery details so a multi-lingual chat server is also to be placed. An employee of Koala Vitamins needs to be able to get all the chats occurring on the webserver in various languages translated into English language in real-time. So a suitable method to address this issue also needs to be found by you.

Each branch of Koala Vitamins Inc. also has an integrated networked printers and a fax machine, and a video conferencing communication facility for its staff use. The manager from Sydney interacts weekly with managers from the branch offices via the video conferencing facility. Each of the branches of Koala Vitamins also provides a cyber Wi-Fi network for its in store customers so that they can use their tablets or mobile phones to get connected to the Internet.

Koala Vitamins in each of their shops has 6 employees who have been provided with laptops. Some of the employees may telecommute from their homes over the weekends. Each of the employees whether they are in shop or telecommuting need to be connected with a secure connection over a wired or a Wireless LAN connection, whichever may be available.

Koala Vitamins is also planning to expand its stores internationally into New Delhi, Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, and Karachi. The CEO of Koala Vitamins has hired you to create a detailed logical topology of the existing network in Australia and the network for internetworking with its futures stores internationally in the cities mentioned above.