IT Infrastructure: Network Design, IP Addressing, and Cloud Computing

IT INFRASTRUCTURE 1
IT Infrastructure
Name
Course
Institution
Date

IT INFRASTRUCTURE 2
Table of Contents
Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Geographical Scope of the Network..........................................................................................3
Logical Network Design........................................................................................................6
IP Addressing.........................................................................................................................8
Virtualization and Cloud Computing.........................................................................................9
Cloud Service Providers.........................................................................................................9
Google Cloud Versus Amazon Web Services.....................................................................10
Techniques of Using Service Virtualization in Implementing Cloud Platforms.................11
Dynamic Cloud Scaling.......................................................................................................12
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
List of references......................................................................................................................14

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Introduction
A computer network refers to the interconnection of the various computing devices
such as servers, printers, desktop computers, laptops, phones, among other computing
components for the purpose of communication and file sharing (CISCO, 2014). The size of
the computer network is dependent on the requirements and size of the organization. Network
infrastructure is one of the core components of any business or organization. Moreover,
because of the increased telecommuting, networking has also become necessary in our homes
so as to meet the increased demands for network services (Laan, 2011). This paper will
attempt to analyze the network requirements for the ABC organization including network
topology, network design, and address the IP address and subnetting challenge. It will further
describe virtualization and cloud computing, recommend two cloud service providers and
how virtualization is important in cloud computing.
Case Study
ABC organization is a tour and travel company. The company has been experiencing
immense growth because of the increased demand for its tour services. Currently, the
company has over 800 staff and more that 1000 workstations. The current offices cannot
accommodate the need to hire more staff or increase the number of workstations. As a result,
the company has decided to acquire a new 8-storey building in Sydney so that it can set up a
new office branch. The building has 8 floors each having 30 rooms. Every room will have 5
network points. In essence, this means that every floor will have about 150 connection points
(workstations); in total, the entire building will have 1200 connection points. In addition, the
new office will be connected to 4 servers including the file server, DHCP server, DNS server,
and Print server. All the employees should be able to access the internet from and emails
from their workstations.
Geographical Scope of the Network
From the requirements provided by the organization, the network will be a Local Area
Network, because it will just cover one building with 8 floors. It cannot be a metropolitan or
wide area network since it does not connect two branches or buildings in different locations.
Basically, a LAN is confined within a small geographical network mostly one building, but
this is not a typical requirement (Coleman, 2012). This relates to the requirements provided

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by the ABC organization since it wants to network a new branch office in Sydney. Each floor
on the building has 30 office, and there will be four servers including print, file, DNS, and
DHCP servers. Users will need to access the internet and print. Additionally, each room will
have five network point suggesting that each floor will have 150 network points equivalent to
150 hosts on each floor. Having such statistics will be very important while subnetting the
network and allocating IP addresses.
LAN is very beneficial for such kind of setup because ABC can have many devices
connected together and facilitates the easy addition of network components depending on the
capabilities of components and characteristics of the network infrastructure (Mbaocha, 2012).
Another advantage is that there will be one internet backbone that will be distributed to other
hosts using the network expansion devices such as switches and hubs or wireless access
points.
While setting up the network, there are basic requirements that the client needs not to
mention probably because of the limited knowledge in networking (Guide, 2011). Such
requirements include, provision of wireless access points, firewalls, print services, and the
network should be scalable because the demand for network services may increase over time.
LAN also allows the sharing of resources and servers, for instance, servers will be set up in
the core layer to allow the different users to access them without having servers dedicated for
every floor.
The services required and the number of devices to be connected will determine the
technology to be used in the LAN. The most common types of LAN connections are Ethernet
and Wi-Fi. However, for ABC, the two types will be implemented to provide a wireless
connection for users to connect to the network with their phones and laptops and an ethernet
connection to connect printers, IP phones, and PCs to the network.
The type of network topology that will be adopted in setting up the ABC network is
hybrid network topology. It will combine bus and star topologies. This is because the 8 floors
will be connected using a single backbone truck connecting the various switches in the eight
floors. The hosts in the various floors will be connected in a star topology for easy
management and troubleshooting and because the failure of any node does not affect the
operations of the other nodes. However, one major setback with this topology is that is the
backbone trunk fails, then the entire network within the building will be compromised (Pop,