Network Analysis and Design for Financial Firm Soylent

Department of Computing
COMP247 Data Communications
Assignment 2, Session 1, 2019
Name: Student Number:
Network Analysis and Design
Introduction
The following report conducts an analysis of the network of financial firm Soylent
and tries to identify faults that exist in the current set up. Based on this the report is
to suggest an improved design along with appropriate justification. Additionally
this report validates the security parameters of the network to check if effective
security measures are in place. The report starts by describing the faults that exist in
the recently upgraded network after which the redesigned network gets proposed.
All changes made to the redesigned network are then justified [1]. The network
design proposed by the report comprises VLANs requiring sub networks of the
major network and corresponding details regarding IP addressing. Then the
security gets further discussed after which the report ends with concluding notes.
Soylent Network Evaluation
The financial and insurance firm Soylent has recently upgraded their
network which unfortunately seems to be causing issues for the firm. As a
result the firm require expert assistance in identifying the faults and
rectifying them.
Identification of faults
Upon preliminary inspection it is found that the recently upgraded network
of Soylent has been implemented in a very inefficient and unplanned manner. The
inefficiency results from multiple repeated branching of the network it gets
provided to the different departments [3]. As a result, performance issues are
destined to occur in the network. These performance issues can include but are not
limited to poor latency, slow response times, network disruptions and slow
bandwidth. The other most notable flaw in Soylent's current network is that little to
no security measures are present. This makes the network of Soylent vulnerable to

both external and internal information security threats. The external security
threats include threats from malwares, hackers, denial of service attacks, spam,
vulnerability exploits among others. To prevent these attacks it is strongly
recommended that companies utilize security applications like firewall
applications, antivirus packages and other tools [1]. Internal security threats can
come from organizational members making misuse of excess privileges. This kind
of threats can be mitigated by ensuring query level access to the members. The web
+ Email server, engineering file server and HR file server are critical resources of a
company and should not be used exclusively through any particular department. It
is better to maintain a server farm where these resources are securely administered.
Other areas of inefficiency include the singular network connections from the ISP
for the Web + Email server and the printer of the engineering department [5]. While
a separate network for the server is still understandable, the connection for the
printer is a complete waste.
Subsection two
The suggested network design is given below:
Figure 1: Proposed Network Design
The primary change that needs to be brought to the network of Soylent is of
implementing a hierarchical modular network architecture with the network access
being made available to the network devices through a multilayer switched
network consisting of distribution and access layer switches. Network connections