IT Risk Management free essay sample

You have been asked to help upgrade the LAN at a very successful ABC firm with five departments in one building and a total of 560 employees. Although the firm’s employees understand accounting, they haven’t spent much time improving their network. Currently, it runs 10Base-T Ethernet and relies on 35 hubs to connect every user workstation to the network. Most of these workstations were purchased within the past two years, when the firm experienced a growth spurt. The hubs are connected to the backbone via switches. The CPA firm wants to upgrade its LAN, but not at great cost. It also wants to ensure that it can easily expand its LAN in the future. It has already decided to use a version of Windows 2008 as its network operating system. What kind of LAN will you design for this company? Describe its physical and logical topologies, what access method it will use, and what Physical layer standard this access method should rely on. We will write a custom essay sample on IT Risk Management or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page What types of infrastructure upgrades are necessary to implement your suggested network? The ABC firm that has five departments in the building those all connected with LAN and total employees of 560, which currently runs 10Base-T Ethernet and relies on 35 hubs. These workstations were purchased in last two years, but they are experiencing slow network connectivity. Based on the current situation, they have decided to use Windows 2008 OS version. Though, this firm has a limited budget, where the firm bought some hardware and software. The IT world uses very high-grade equipments through which we can integrate and update the existing network. The below design shows the hubs which are upgraded by me to switches and these are much better than hubs. Each department has 112 employees and we got five departments, which are connected with one router. I recommend for this network that every department should have one printer which must be connected with the same network. Based on the size of the firm and for a higher growth in the near future, my recommendation to the firm is that it should have a secure, intelligent and much faster network, which leads to upgrade the current network. I have modified extended star topology that one router gets connected with the internet and also with all five department’s switches. Every department has 112 employees and we are using five switches for each department whereas one of the switches connects to main router and the rest of the switches connect with other router. This way we get 120 ports in each department in which we are providing printers that will connect to one of the switches of that department. Thus, we can bring 112 ports in use and the rest will be left safe for future expand without any exorbitant cost or moving a lot of equipments. We can add printer, fax, workstation, or other things as well in these ports. If the firm would have more employees or workstations, then the firm would add new switch connect all workstations to that switch which one connected with the same department’s switch. PHYSICAL TOPOLOGY: Physical topology means the physical design of a network including the devices, location and cable installation. It is the physical structure of the network. LOGICAL TOPOLOGY: Logical topology refers to how data is actually transferred in a network as opposed to its physical design. In general, physical topology relates to a core network whereas logical topology relates to basic network. The logical topology is the way that the signals act on the network media, or the way that the data passes through the network from one device to the next without regard to the physical interconnection of the devices. LAN ACCESS METHOD: Local area network (LAN) access methods, such as CSMA/CD in Ethernet, transfer data to and from connected computers on the network. These methods reference layers 1 and 2 of the OSI model. CSMA/CD: It is used with bus and some star topologies. It operates by contention; each terminal competes for access to the bus. A terminal wishing to transmit attempts this when the bus is quiet. Concurrently, received signals are monitored by this terminal to check for corruption resulting from collision with another transmission present at the same time. In the event of such a collision its effect at this terminal is enforced with the use of a jamming signal and all current transmissions are stopped. Repeated retransmissions are made, with designed in-delays to reduce the probability of further collisions, until successful transmission occurs. When carrying long data packets over short cables and with offered traffic of about 20% or less of maximum, the systems works extremely well. TDMA: It was originally devised for digital microwave and satellite communications systems. It is still used with many such systems as well as with some fiber optic systems. Fixed time slots are made available, regardless of whether they are actually used. The complete end-to-end bit sequences within each time slots are usually called a serial packet, each of which comprises source and destination address, data bits, control and status bits. The system is accessed through terminal stations and repeaters. Transmission is into an empty packet or packets and reception occurs via packet address recognition. A monitor station monitors the integrity of the system during normal operation and places framing bits around packets in the initializing process. WORKGROUP SWITCHES: Firm has the smallest of the switching hubs. They usually have between 8 and 12 ports per hub used to connect stations and the servers these stations need to access. If selecting this type of hub, this kind of hub not intelligent like switches and not reliable to secure either to ensure that firm for growth. Those hubs can’t be taking too much load that’s why network is too slow. So see the future growth I decide to change hub to switches. DEPARTMENTAL SWITCHES In new design, there are switches connected to other department as that and main switch connecting with other department switches and server as well. DISADVANTAGE: Newly designed Ethernet a central connection point might be desirable for security or restricted access, but this is also a major disadvantage of a star topology if the central device fails, the whole network becomes disconnected. When a star network is expanded to include an additional networking device that is connected for the main networking device, it is called an extended star topology.