Unit's Learning Outcomes

At the completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Describe LAN and WAN network technologies, topologies and implementations;

2. Configure, test and troubleshoot various network devices such as routers and switches;

3. Configure and test different WAN protocols, such as HDLC, PPP, Frame Relay, DHCP, ISDN, NAT and PAT in a network environment;

4. Devise LAN and WAN design and test network implementations;

5. Identify and compare IPv4 and IPv6 in WAN networks;

6. Discuss the requirements of hierarchical network models for campus and other similar applications;

7. Utilise a systematic approach to solve various network problems.

MIT's Graduate Attributes

8. Ability to Communicate

9. Independent and Lifelong Learning

10. Ethics

11. Analytical and Problem Solving

12. Cultural and Global Awareness

13. Team work

14. Specialist knowledge of a field of study

Task 1:

Complete the table below for CIDR Prefixes, available IP addresses and Their Decimal Equivalent.

Note: To obtain full mark, there should not be any mistake in the table. In other words, zero (0) mark will be given unless 100% correct for the entire table from A1 to B10.

Note: Don't forget that you need to consider network address and broadcast address, which should be considered for the available IP addresses.

Using Private IPv4 Addresses

The IANA has reserved three blocks of IPv4 addresses for companies to use on their private networks. These addresses are defined in RFC 1918, Address Allocation for Private Internets. You can use these private addresses, also known as 1918 addresses, for systems on local networks within a corporate intranet. However, private addresses are not valid on the Internet. Do not use them on systems that must communicate outside the local network.

The following table lists the private IPv4 address ranges and their corresponding netmasks.

How IP Addresses Apply to Network Interfaces

To connect to the network, a system must have at least one physical network interface. Each network interface must have its own unique IP address. During installation, you must supply the IP address for the first interface that the installation program finds. Usually that interface has the name device-name, and this interface is considered the primary network interface.

Task 2:

Design private subnetworks (using Class A range for CIDR) for each domain as in the table below, and complete the table.

Hints: Consider how many network bits are required to accommodate (accumulate) ALL of the network masks in the table. It may be easier to use Excel to allocate each block to calculate the mother (?) network masks, which can be sub-divided into many subnets.

Task 3:

You are requested to design IP addressing for 10 x subnets for the following requirements: To accommodate X hosts for each subnet
,where X = 2, 7, 17, 32, 66, 1024, 2047, 4900, 10,000 and 500,000.

1. Use the table in task 2 (if required) or use your own template, e.g. Excel spreadsheet, to work out and provide below for each subnet

(1) Network mask
(2) Network Address
(3) Host from
(4) Host To
(5) No of Available IP addresses (usable) and
(6) Broadcast Address

2. Show formulas to work out the number of bits allocated for (a) Network and (b) Hosts for the last subnet, i.e. subnet hosting 500,000 hosts.

3. To design and accommodate the above 10 subnets, what network and network mask do you use to maximize reserved IP ranges? List all of the reserved IP address ranges after 10 subnets have been allocated for future use. [3 mark]

Notes:

- No need to consider future expansion for hosts.
- Use Class A IP address range and CIDR to design
- Try to save as many IP ranges as possible for future use.

Part 2: Problem Based Learning (PBL)

Read the below and learn how they designed and built their network to resolve the problems.

Building Express Backbone: Facebook's new long-haul network

Facebook has multiple data centers in the U.S and Europe. For the past ten years, they were connected by a single wide-area (WAN) backbone network known as the classic backbone or CBB. This network carried both user (egress) traffic and internal server-to-server traffic.

In recent years, bandwidth demand for cross-data center replication of rich content like photos and video has been increasing rapidly, challenging the efficiency and speed of evolution of the classic backbone.

Furthermore, machine-to-machine traffic often occurs in large bursts that may interfere with and impact the regular user traffic, affecting our reliability goals. As new data centers were being built, we realized the need to split the cross-data center vs Internet-facing traffic into different networks and optimize them individually. In a less than a year, we built the first version of our new cross-data center backbone network, called the Express Backbone (EBB), and we've been growing it ever since.

Tasks 4:

Provide answers to all the questions.

1. What are the problems motivating the project?

2. There are several protocols mentioned in the article. What are they? List ALL of them. Briefly describe the protocols found above. At least 4 protocols (100 - 200 words each).

3. When they began the network design, they had objectives to overcome constraints. What did they do to achieve the goals? Write two of them.

4. What are the benefits of their approach after the project has been completed?

5. What are the challenges they faced after the project?

6. What are the 3 major steps they followed in network design to achieve the goals?

7. What are the benefits of a hybrid model for software design?

8. What is LSP? How are LSPs created in MPLS? (500 - 800 words)

9. Describe ‘Data Centre' including definition, purpose, trend, related issues etc. (500 - 800 words)

10. Summarise traffic engineering, what is it? How does it work? Why is it required? e.g. RSVP- TE (500 - 800 words)

Attachment:- Assessment Template.rar