SNHU Network Upgrade and Maintenance Plan Proposal Project – Description
Overview
The final project for this course is the creation of a network upgrade and maintenance plan proposal.
In today’s business world, network architectures have become more and more critical to the success of an organization. The correct architecture, design, and implementation from a network engineer is imperative to fully understand the implications of the network within the business. As an IT professional, an understanding of the foundational concepts in network development and maintenance is key, and as a professional specializing in networks and telecommunications, a comprehensive knowledge of networking and telecommunications concepts, advancements, and appropriate implementation are essentials for success. This project will give you the opportunity to tackle a real-world networking issue in preparation for professional IT networking. You will showcase your conceptual knowledge as you apply it to the design of a network architecture that aligns to the needs of a particular organization. Your design will not only meet organizational needs, but attend to the potential for growth and technological advancement. Additionally, you will need to develop a plan for the maintenance of the network. You will submit these in the form of a proposal to the organization for the consideration of executives.
You will begin this project by imagining yourself as a network consultant in a medium-sized company. You have been tasked with preparing a plan to maintain and upgrade the network environment, in order to meet the growing technology needs of the organization. Your assignment will be to draft a network upgrade and maintenance plan that includes, at minimum, network performance analysis, identifying key issues, designing an effective network plan, and proposing a lifecycle management and maintenance plan that will align to the organizational needs.
Scenario
Imagine you are a freelance networking consultant working with FreshSource Distribution Inc., a medium-sized food packaging and distribution company that is facing challenges related to its current network infrastructure. As a consultant to the company, you are responsible for analyzing the current network performance, identifying key issues, designing an effective network plan, and proposing a lifecycle management and maintenance plan that will align to the organizational needs. Management has come to realize that their network infrastructure is outdated and is hindering efficient computing operations. You have been tasked with preparing a plan to maintain and upgrade the network environment in order to meet the growing technology needs of the organization.
FreshSource Distribution Inc. is a medium-sized food packaging and distribution company with three warehouse facilities that cover the northern, central, and southern Florida areas. Each warehouse has an administrative staff of 40–50 employees who handle shipping, receiving, purchasing, accounting, payroll, and other administrative duties. The company has recently been seeing strong business growth and has expanded hiring by 10% to 15% each year.
The network infrastructure and environment is using legacy equipment that is slow and outdated. Each warehouse has a 10-base local area network (LAN) with two 30-port daisy chained hubs that are then connected to an external-facing router. The company has wide area network (WAN) connectivity among all three warehouses, using bonded 128 Kbps ISDN lines for a total bandwidth of 256 Kbps between each site.
The datacenter for the organization is located in the central Florida warehouse. The northern and southern warehouses must synchronize their inventories with the main inventory control servers at the central warehouse location. These files are becoming larger in size and taking large amounts of time to synchronize for the WAN. All sites also access the internet through the central Florida location. The internet connection consists of a single 128 Kbps ISDN line. Another issue is that network administration staff has noted many unwanted devices attempting to connect to and access their internal network by constantly pinging and trace routing their external router. This has raised the issue of security with management and has also caused degraded network performance.
Refer to the Final Project Visio diagram for a visual representation of this scenario.
Prompt
Your project will have two parts: a network design and an analysis report. You will evaluate the critical elements within the scenario and determine the network requirements and business drivers within the scenario. In your report, you will summarize your analysis related to the scenario, and then gather and assess information related to a solution that will help you in the creation and analysis of your design. Finally, you will prepare a final visual design of the network, based on the critical elements and a detailed design analysis supporting your network architectural solution.
Your assignment will be to draft a network upgrade and maintenance plan that includes, at minimum, the following critical elements:
Executive Summary:
Network Performance Analysis: Analyze the information provided in the scenario. What are the key issues that the company is experiencing? Where are the bottlenecks occurring? What given information supports your reasoning?
Root Causes: What are the root causes of the issues that the company is facing? What specific network problems are causing the key issues? Support your reasoning with examples and supporting resources where necessary.
Continued Impact on the Business: How is the current network performance misaligned to the needs of the business? Explain how persistence of these issues will cause underperformance of the network and how that could affect business functionality. How is the predicted result misaligned to what the organization needs? Be sure to support your reasoning with examples and relevant resources.
Business Needs and Initiatives: You have identified the key issues, root causes of these issues, and sources of misalignment to business needs. What are the specific business needs that need to be met by your network architecture? What business initiatives may create new needs and, therefore, require additional network support or alteration? Cite resources and specific examples from the scenario to support your reasoning.
Security Standards and Best Practices: What are some security standards that might be applicable to this company? Are there industry-specific standards for security or security needs of this specific organization that the network may not be attending to? What network security standards could help establish sound security practices (e.g., NIST, FIPS, SANs, etc.)? Why do you feel these standards would be beneficial for this particular company? Are these standards industry requirements or just recommendations? Cite the resources you use to support your conclusions.
Network Plan and Architecture Design:
Security Devices: What are some fundamental security devices, items, or software that should be in place to align to the security standards you have outlined? Why do you feel these are necessary? What value will they add?
Network Architecture Designs:
Existing: Create a network architecture that represents the existing structure and identifies the key areas of need. Ideally, this will consist of an annotated network diagram showing how the current structure looks and where the structure falls short of meeting organizational needs.
Proposed: Create a network architecture that represents the desired result after you attend to the existing areas of need. Ideally, your proposed design will logically support the business initiatives that were highlighted in the executive summary. Be sure to highlight any specific upgrades.
Network Design Reasoning: Defend your reasoning for each of the proposed upgrades. How will the upgrades benefit the organization? How will the new architecture meet business needs? Will the costs of the upgrade translate into tangible benefits to the organization? Provide resource evidence and examples when appropriate.
Lifecycle Management and Maintenance Plan:
New Aspects of Architecture: Considering your new network architecture in comparison with the old architecture, what aspects of the network equipment or network connections needed to be replaced? In other words, what aspects of the architecture are new and why was it necessary to replace what existed?
Length of Life: What type of lifecycles exist or should be in place for the equipment and network connections? In other words, how often should aspects of the architecture be reviewed to ensure that they are meeting business needs? How soon and how often do you think they will need to be replaced? Why?
Regular Maintenance: What type of regular maintenance should be performed (firmware, software, IOS updates, etc.) to maintain currency and improve quality of service? Why? Establish a realistic plan that will ensure quality of service and currency of network aspects. Provide support where appropriate.
Security Maintenance: What type of ongoing security tasks should be conducted to prevent security breaches that are the result of new threats and vulnerabilities due to technological advances and organizational growth? What security best practices should be incorporated? Develop a security maintenance task list that will ensure continued security of the network infrastructure. Include your reasoning.
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