Local Area Network (LAN) Design, Implementation, and Management

LOCAL AREA NETWORK

Contents
LO1: Impact of LAN Technologies.................................................................................................3
1.1 Critically evaluate different LAN technologies.....................................................................3
1.2 Critically analyse traffic intensive services and their performance.......................................4
1.3 Discuss LAN concerns and make recommendations to sustain network security, reliability
and performance...........................................................................................................................4
LO2: Be able to design LAN infrastructures...................................................................................6
2.1 Design LAN infrastructure to meet a given requirement.......................................................6
2.2 critically evaluate the suitability of LAN components..........................................................7
LO3: Be able to implement LAN infrastructures............................................................................8
3.1 Build and configure a LAN (including services) to meet a given requirement.....................8
3.2 implement network security on a LAN................................................................................11
3.3 Critically review and test a LAN.........................................................................................12
LO4: Be able to manage LAN infrastructures...............................................................................14
4.1 Monitoring and Troubleshooting LAN................................................................................14
4.2 resolve LAN issues to improve security, reliability and performance.................................14
References......................................................................................................................................16
Appendix........................................................................................................................................17

LO1: Impact of LAN Technologies
1.1 Critically evaluate different LAN technologies
Local Area Network is a computer network in which we connect different network devices to
facilitate data communication between the users present in our company or organization. By
establishing a LAN connection, we can achieve security and reliability within our computer
network. In order to make our LAN connections easy and cost-effective, it is necessary that we
wisely choose a right and simple LAN technology.
We have different LAN technologies like:
Ethernet LAN is one of the most used technologies. Many organizations use this technology to
connect their different network terminals such as computers, printers either in the same building
or at different places. Maintaining an Ethernet LAN connection is considered as Simple. For
network access, Ethernet LAN technology uses the feature of Carrier Sense
Multi-Access/Collision Detection (CSMA/CD By default, an Ethernet uses 10BASE-T features
which means that it is capable of providing the transmission speed of 10 Mbps
(Differencebetween.info, 2018).
Fast-Ethernet: To meet the need of fast-growing network technologies, the use of Fast-Ethernet
LAN has been started. It is capable of providing a speed of 100 Mbps. One of the other
differences between the Ethernet and Fast Ethernet LAN is that the latter uses CSMA/CA
(Carrier sense multi-access/collision avoidance) technique for sharing of the data between
different hosts connected into the same network.
Giga-Ethernet is used when the transmission speed goes up to 1000 Mbps. For achieving that
speed Cat5, Cat5e and Cat6 cables are used in the LAN architecture.
VLAN (Virtual LAN) Many times we need to restrict the communication between the hosts of a
network. Like in a company, Accounts department cannot communicate with the Management
department. In such a scene we have to put those users into different broadcast domains. For
this, we use the concept of VLAN. By default, all hosts are placed into VLAN 1 so they can
communicate to each other. But once we assign hosts into different VLAN's then host in one
VLAN cannot communicate with another VLAN's host (Lifewire. 2018).

1.2 Critically analyse traffic intensive services and their performance.
QoS: The concept of QoS was developed for prioritization of Network traffic or congestion.
Implementing QoS in our network results in a performance improvement for critical network
traffic. It is a feature by which we can set or assign the bandwidth to a specific service. It helps in
controlling the congestion on a network with a limited quantity of Bandwidth.
There is a number of services on which we can implement QoS such as VoIP (Voice over IP),
Video conferencing, TCP/UDP services etc.
Bandwidth management is basically a feature by which we assign or save the bandwidth
according to our requirement. QoS helps us to achieve this. In this way, we ensure that the
bandwidth is not misused and could get us the maximum throughput from our network
Some of the mechanisms for implementation of QoS in our network are :
 Policing (Rate Limiting): Setting a highest or upper limit of bandwidth for a service.
 WFQ (Weighted Fair Queue): Processing each service according to the weights assigned to
them.
 CBWFQ (Class-Based weighted fair queue) (Network Computing, 2016).
1.3 Discuss LAN concerns and make recommendations to sustain network security,
reliability and performance
Cisco developed a model which is widely used, known as Hierarchical network or Three-tier
model. This model helps in creating a credible, scalable and money-saving internetwork
arrangement. A hierarchical model divides an internetwork connection into three layers: Core,
Distribution and Access layers. Through this division of the network components, the task of
managing the large network becomes easier. Also, it becomes easier to add or remove any new
service or component into the preexisting network.