Computer Science Network Design and Management for a 300 Room Hotel with meeting rooms that support Video Conferencing Technology.  Your client is requesting a written analysis of your design explaining the technology and why you think this design will work. It needs to be secure, scalable, and cost effective.

Deadline – January 17, 2014 – 6PM EST – Length 8 to 10 Pages

I will pay $75 for this assignment.

Course Project – Using APA Style Guidelines, Design and describe the LAN topology and strategies of a wireless and wired LAN for a 300 room hotel with 60 employee’s providing customer service, video conference services in the meeting rooms, Wireless service for guests, and an administrative hotel network for the hotel staff.  The hotel staff utilizes Windows 7 desktop and laptop devices with MS Office 2010 products, utilizes email, network printers, Quickbooks for payroll and invoicing, and hotel guest reservation tracking software.  Ruckus wireless equipment will be used, HP or Cisco switching and routing equipment will be used.

The fully completed Network Design Project includes a title page (include your name, date, title of your plan), the Executive Summary and the content outlined, plus any applicable tables, graphs or attachments.  Footnotes (or endnotes) and a Bibliography are required.

You must use no less than 6 verifiable resources .  Cite all sources. All references must be cited in two places: within the text and on a reference list.

Key Objectives to address in paper:

1. Analyze Business Goals, technical goals, and network constraints as you describe both the network design process and the factors that require the goals and constraints to be a part of the network management process.

2. Characterize the network traffic and network requirements as you establish the performance criteria and constraints for a data network and identify several potential solutions that yield an optimal network.

3. Utilizing the network topology, describe standards and protocols used in the network architecture ( example – VLAN’s, switching, and routing protocols ), understand major problems associated with network management, and describe standard functions and strategies to manage these problems.

4. Understand tools, equipment, and techniques required to effectively monitor and manage the Campus network, its traffic type, and the status of different devices on the network.  Compare and contrast the major management tools available for day-to-day network management.

5. Optimize and test the network design solution – identify the optimal solution for a data network to satisfy a given set of performance criteria and constraints for the support of a network carrying multimedia and videoconferencing.  Develop a design strategy that provides the high bandwidth, high QOS, and low delay required for such applications.

6. Given a network design, identify an optimal network security strategy for the network design, including wireless networks.

COURSE PROJECT FORMAT

Utilize a Table of Contents

Include an Executive Summary                                               

Outline your network design strategy, mission and goals.  Point out key success factors and/or major pitfalls you plan to avoid.  Reference major actions or changes you anticipate, and how these may impact your strategy.

Include a good Mission Statement that meets the criteria of the RFP or defined scenario. This should be a standalone paragraph that clearly indicates the requirements and addresses how your plan will meet them, in general terms.    Ensure that you have clearly stated what your Network Design Plan is designed to do, e.g., measureable goals by which your design will solve the scenario or customer’s requirements.  Another words –  What do you plan to accomplish?  An Executive Summary is a synopsis of the critical information that is found in the other sections of the document.  Its purpose is to communicate to the reader “this is what you will be reading.”  Thus, you might include a brief paragraph for each of the key sections. 

Suggested length:  1-2 pages

Project Scope                                                                     

Provide a complete description of the design project, and identify the specific Network Design and Management issues.  Spend time defining and describing your project; a thorough understanding and clear articulation of the project’s scope is critical to the successful development of the rest of your plan.  The scope should describe the major characteristics of the project, such as the business need & problem, the deliverables, and the approach at a high level.

Present background/facts that will enable the client to clearly understand the topic, and follow the rationale of your design. The scope should help the reader envision the project and how you propose to accomplish it. 

Suggested length: 1-2 Pages

Project Goal                                                                       

The project goal statement should be the driving force behind the project. It should include the purpose or specific result expected from the project and achieved through the project objectives and activities.  It should include the criteria against which everything done on the project is measured.   A good project goal statement is specific, measureable and realistic.

The goal should state exactly what the project is to accomplish at a high level.  It should be phrased using action words (such as “design,” “build,” “implement,” etc.).   It should be limited to those essential elements of the project that communicate the purpose of the project and the outcome expected.   In this section, explain the role the network design will play in helping the organization succeed.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.  The goal statement is a measure for the project; if the goal is accomplished, the project is a success.  Watch out for using words that can be misinterpreted such as; improve, increase, reduce (by how much?), customer satisfaction (who decides if they’re satisfied and how?), etc

Your goal should discuss if the project is realistic.  A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn’t break them.  The implementation plan of the project should indicate the delivery timeframe and any training or additional knowledge needed by the organization.  These topics should be lightly discussed during the project goal.

Identify and clearly state the Network Design and Management principles (including the Key Objectives listed above) that you will give special focus and the issues in which will be addressed by the project. Suggested length:  1-2 pages

Design Requirements                                                     

The project must describe your customer’s requirements which define what the project is ultimately supposed to do and how your design meets those requirements.  A requirement is an objective that must be met.  This section should provide instructions describing the functions the network design is supposed to provide, the characteristics the design will have, and the objectives it is supposed to meet or enable users to meet.

Project requirements provide an obvious tool for evaluating the quality of a project, because a final review should examine whether each requirement has been met. The requirements should be defined towards the quality of the end-user’s experience.  Including a subsection entitled “Assumptions” under your design requirements would probably be a good idea.

Suggested length:  1-3 pages

Current State of the Network                                      

A significant section of the network design plan is examining your customer’s existing network. To better judge how to meet expectations for network performance, scalability and reliability, this section should describe the customer’s current state of the network. 

This section should concentrate on characterizing the existing network.  Understanding the current topology and locating the existing network segments and equipment will be useful to verify your customer’s or project’s goal, and will be useful when trying to determine the new equipment that must be installed in the network.

In addition to understanding and documenting the topology, this section should describe a baseline of the current performance.  This will be an important measurement to demonstrate that your new design improves performance.

Suggested length:  1-3 pages

Logical and Physical Design                             

Develop a network topology based on knowledge gained about traffic flow and load in the requirements section of this design plan.  This section should also discuss the network layer addressing and naming models, and selects bridging, switching and routing protocols.  Any security and network management strategies should be covered in this section.

Provide a detailed description of the rationale behind your design. Be sure that the solutions you propose relate directly to the requirements of the network as identified in the development process. Discuss the concepts, ideas or insights that are most valuable in helping you make sense of your network design. Support your analysis with reference to appropriate research.  This section should tie together the requirements which include the traffic flow and project goals to the physical design, in which cabling, devices and technologies are added to the final network architecture.

Suggested length:  2-3 pages

Implementation Plan      

Explore the solution(s) that could be appropriate to solve the identified requirements of the network that arise during the network design process.  Be sure the solution(s) is/are logical based on your analysis and that the solution(s) would effectively satisfy the identified requirements. Also, discuss the anticipated outcomes (both positive and negative) of implementing the network design solution(s) you identified.  Describe how the network as designed would be managed for optimal outcomes.

The implementation plan should include recommendations for deploying the proposed network design, a project plan (including any dates and times for service provider installations), discuss any plans for outsourcing, training, identify risks, a fallback plan if the implementation should fail and a plan for evolving the design as new requirements arise.

Suggested length:  1-2 pages

Project Budget                                                                  

Include in your plan, your project budget or projected dollar costs for your first year of expenses.  This should be based on your having made a diligent effort to understand approximate expenses for designing the network.  The budget should include allocations for equipment purchases, software licenses, maintenance and support agreement, testing, training and staffing.

It is important that you research your costs.  You should be able to cite references that will allow you to share the actual costs for which you will budget.  Provide a realistic project budget that covers everything you deem necessary to complete the project.

You should state who, within the company, has control of the budget.  And try to contain costs as much as possible.  Chapter 2 of the book “Top Down Network design” discusses typical trade-offs that must be made to meet the goal of affordability while achieving good performance and reliability.  Discuss or incorporate some of these trade-offs in determining the project’s budget.

The data for this section can be provided in an excel spreadsheet, but should contain an overall description of the items contained in the budget.

Suggested length:  1-2 pages