Project Network Design
Design of a Computer Network for an Accounting Firm
Project Objectives:
• Design a local area computer network for a business environment
• Learn to select networking equipment
• Learn to optimize a design based on cost constraints
• Learn to write a business letter and price quotation for a networking project
Project Description:
You are asked to design a computer network (peer-to-peer or client/server) for an Accounting firm in the city of Fort Valley, GA. The firm has 6 employees (including the president). Each employee has a computer with Windows XP and a low cost ink jet printer. The company has a good color laser jet printer located in the secretary's office. Currently, the employees need to submit their document on a jump drive, or CD to the secretary for quality printouts. The president of the company makes it clear to you that he wants to be the last one to get disconnected from the color laser printer because of any technical difficulty in the network or a failure in a networking device. He also makes it clear that he does not want to place the laser printer in his office. The president also explains it to you that presently they do not have a system to backup important files in all computers. He would like to see a cost effective way of designing a computer network and doing file backups for his firm.
You visit the firm to make the initial evaluation of the site as well as the firm's hardware and software systems. You notice that the computers are all Pentium machines running at800 MHz with 512 MB in RAM. You also notice that all computers have 10Mbs network interface card. The color laser printer has 64 MB in RAM (expandable to 256 MB); however, it can not be directly connected to the network because it is does not have a network interface port. You draw a map of the site (as shown in Figure 1) and promise the firm's president to give him your network design and price quotation in three days.
Assignments:
1. Write a professional letter to the CEO of the company explaining how you would design a network for this firm. In your letter you need to justify why your suggested network selection (e.g.; peer-to-peer, client/server, or wireless) is suitable for this firm. Also, in the letter you need to address the CEO's demands as mentioned in the above. In doing real world projects, you need to give options to your clients. Thus, provide two methods of designing this network (e.g.; low cost and premium) and explain the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
2. Attach to the letter, the drawing (schematic) of a network layout for this project showing the paths of wires and the location of network-closet (You may use Visio software for this task).
3. Attach to the letter, a professional price quotation to implement the design of each network. Use a spreadsheet software system such as Excel that contains price quotation templates to create the price quotations. You may need to check with www.cdw.com to find the prices of networking equipment (hubs, switches, and/or routers), various hardware systems (e.g.; wires, wiring cabinet, patch panel, raceways, backup system, etc.) and software systems (e.g.; anti-virus and spyware, operating systems, etc.). Assume that your hourly labor rate is $90.
Note that your network design must be in such away that can easily be expanded to meet the future growth of the company
Figure 1: The layout of the law firm
