Network Redesign Project: FNU's Scalable Infrastructure Solution

This project focuses on redesigning the network infrastructure for The First National University (FNU), an online distance learning institution facing challenges related to scalability, security, and user experience. The project addresses the need for improved network performance to accommodate a growing student population, particularly focusing on the scalability requirements to support a 50% increase in enrollment within three years. It identifies key issues such as slow network speeds, problems with online assignment submissions, and the lack of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Work at Home (WAT) policies. The project proposes solutions to improve online assignment submissions, implement secure wireless networks for BYOD and WAT, and enhance overall network security. It also analyzes FNU's business goals, including expansion through partnerships and the need for a robust network to support a larger number of students. The project emphasizes the importance of scalability and availability, and offers recommendations for achieving these goals through techniques like network load balancing and disaster recovery planning. The project aims to provide a comprehensive solution for FNU to improve its network infrastructure, ensuring it can meet the demands of its students and staff and support future growth.

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Network Redesign for FNU
Overview
Business Domain:
The network redesigning is required at The First National University (FNU). FNU is a higher
educational organization for long distance learning. This is the first educational organization
providing online courses in the country. The university runs online training and courses; it requires a
network infrastructure of very high performance to provide Quality of Services to the end users. The
university covers 5 regional campuses and 10 metropolitan campuses and a main campus to run
such a huge educational institute. University offers undergraduates programs and postgraduate
programs through distance learning. Moreover it provides Vocational and Educational Training (VET)
as well as short programs for professionals to increase their skills. FNU teaches 45,000 students at
both undergraduate and postgraduate level for various programs on-campus whereas 15,000
students are studying off-campus for distance education at FNU. To ensure services to be delivered
at all the ends, FNU’s network is designed to divide into 3 facility centers. Firstly, Headquarters,
where main campus is located. Second, Operation i.e. Data Centre which is located 50 km away from
headquarters. At the Operations center, the technical staff is appointed for managing and
performing IT related tasks required for proper functioning of the network. The third division is the
Backup Facility. Backup facility is located 1000 km away from the main campus. This is because
backup facility is needed only when operation facility breaks down.
Network Issues:
1. As discussed above, due to heavy number of users on the network, it may result in network slow
down. The online submission is the key facility provided by FNU for ease of submission and
evaluation for the students as well as staff members. Due to online submission for both on-campus
and off-campus students, it has been observed quite a few times that the network problems
appear which makes the late submission for most of the students which in turn results in the bad
grades.
2. FNU has no Bring your own device (BYOD) and Work at home (WAT) policies embodied in the
network which is highly needed by the students and staff to make it possible to work from their
own devices. For this purpose, the secure wireless network should be implemented which
supports BYOD and WAT.
Immediate actions to take in regards of the identified issues:
1. Scalability for 50% increased enrollment in next three years.
2. Improvements with issues in online assignment submissions.
3. Implementation of bring your own device policy by adhering wireless network in the campus.
This enables the students to work on their own laptops, tablets, notebooks and smartphones.
4. With WAT it will allow users (students and staff members) to access network facilities from

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their homes.
5. Security measures must be taken to safeguard data from the hackers.
6. Providing Quality of Services to the network users both at on-campus and off-campus.
Identify Organisation’s Needs and Constraints
Business Goals
FNU is divided into regional and metropolitan campuses that are all similar in size of infrastructure,
staff members and technology. These campuses are all well built with network and required
technologies which serves at its best to the students studying in that campus. With academic
teaching and learning activities both on-campus and off-campus, FNU also has 12 external partners
some of them are:
Hospital: FNU deals with providing training to students for hospitals. On the other fair side, FNU
helps hospitals to get their best interns at the optimum search. The hospitals get benefited by
appointing best candidates at their hospitals with limited searching. The university offers all the
medical related courses which help hospitals to get the best suited candidate.
Research Center: FNU may help students by providing current research practices due to its
partnerships with research centers. It benefits students for future reference. On the contrary, the
research centers uses data and statistics from the university to research further about a particular
field of interest. FNU ties up with such research centers to allow them to perform researches in
some areas.
Vendor Support and Technology are other fields FNU have partnerships with which one or the
other way benefits the students learning process. Also, the FNU offers campus interviews for the
students to get placed in various companies which in turn benefit the companies for selecting best
candidates on the basis of their grades.
As per the requirements discussed above for FNU, it becomes very important to identify the
organizations goals to provide best services to the users of the network, be it students, teaching staff or
technical staff. The business goals are as elaborated below:
1. The university is currently having 45,000 students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level
for various programs on-campus whereas 15,000 students are studying off-campus for distance
education. Future goal of university is to expect new enrollments of 50% rise in upcoming three
years. From the business point of view, the FNU is preparing to add new students both on-
campus and off-campus. FNU presumes to increase the students at the largest possible rate by
providing learning in new and currently trending fields.
2. The FNU provides day learning courses for on-campus students. These activities can also be
extended to short training programs to attract more students and get more enrollments on-
campus. Some short training courses should also be undertaken with certification that will
attract more students seeking for on-campus education for limited time period.
3. The off-campus online courses provided by the university are limited to some extents. To
increase the enrollments, it is required to introduce new training courses. With new courses

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added in online training or long distance learning it is possible to attract off-campus students for
distance education.
4. As far as partnership related expansion is concerned, the FNU administrative and managerial
staff must communicate with more hospitals, companies and research centers. These partners
extension result in attracting more students. Also it may result in recognition from various other
universities.
5. To provide large number of courses for huge number of students, FNU is aiming to provide the
best network for the users. The current goal is to redesign the university network to provide end
to end services without any interruption. Many students using network all the time must have a
heavy load at every moment. FNU aims to use better network policies for the entire network.
6. Foremost goal of FNU is to increase students and this increase in students will result in heavy
loads at metropolitan campuses. This will result in increased number of regional campuses for
distributing students.
7. University also aims at providing BYOD and WAT policies in the network for more usability in the
network.
Needs of improvements in FNU Network:
1. Since several numbers of students and staff members uses the network, FNU network must be
very good at providing best performance. Right from internet surfing to downloading files,
sending emails and providing high end network performance is the high need of the network.
2. The business goal of FNU is to increase number of students by 50% in the next three years;
hence it requires a network design which is highly scalable in nature. New PCs at campus must
be added up in the network without much overhead is the basic need of the network since more
number of students is expected to be increasing in upcoming years.
3. The university provides off-campus distance learning and hence must be available at any time
for its distance learners. Moreover, it requires the student’s on-campus to submit their
assignments online; hence availability of network is very important at that part as well.
4. FNU must also provide Bring Your Own Device and Work AT Home policies in the network for
more usability in the network. These policies are highly needed at the university since it is
affecting the usability of the network. Once more and more personal devices can be connected
to the network, it will affect in overall students learning process.
5. FNU needs to implement a secure wireless network which safeguards student’s login
credentials, files, and other important assets. Moreover, it may restrict the intruder getting into
the network by facilitating strict security measures. Authentication will also need once BYOD
and WAT policies discussed above are implemented in the network to filter illegal activities. The
other security measures should also be taken to protect important files in the server.
Constraints in FNU network
1. Foremost limitation of FNU network is that it does not support bring-your-own-device (BYOD)
which makes it difficult for students to migrate their work from university PCs to laptops and
vice versa. With this limitation students cannot work from their own laptops, notebooks or
tablets.

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2. The network does not support work at home (WAT) policy which does not allow users to access
university network from their personal spaces. WAT must be provided by the university which
will help staff members to carry their pending work out from their homes.
3. Another noticeable limitation is that it sometimes fails to upload assignments due to poor
performance which leads in late submission of homework. This eventually results in poor grades
of the students. The load at the deadline of the submission is observed to be very heavy in the
network which results in slow down of the network and hence students are unable to upload
their assignments on time.
4. The main campus of the university holds large number of users including students and staff.
Other campuses like regional and metropolitan campuses are in similar sizes and technology
usage. All those campuses use old complex technologies which are out-dated and results in
poor performance of the network.
Some technical issues are also noticed in the network which is needed to be noticed and fixed as early as
possible. The technical goals related to the university network as discussed below:
Technical Goals:
1. Scalability
Scalability can be best defined as the ability of the network to ensure no degradation in overall
network performance even if the network size in increased. Scalability is one of the most
important features a sound network can attain. It is the property of the network to add devices
to its existing cluster in such a manner that new added devices do not collectively form a load
that exceeds the cluster’s collective load to offer adequate performance. Scalability once
attained on the network, provides good quality of services in the network since it eventually
relates to the network performance.
The redesigned FNU network must have this feature so that it can be scaled to support
extended usage of services including multimedia applications. This feature is important in FNU
so as to include online teaching in its training part. FNU must provide scalable network for
further enrollments of the new students both on-campus and off-campus. This features must be
employed everywhere at all the campuses. There are several techniques to attain scalability
these are, Network Load Balancing (NLB), scaling up and scaling out. Network load balancing is
the trustworthy technique that allows the network to assess the load on the network and
balance it to provide better network performance. FNU network needs high scalability for its
goal to enroll 50% of the current strength in next three years.
2. Availability (half a page)
The organizations with multiple data centers, network availability are a vital concern. To
perform operations daily such as downloading files from server at FNU requires high need
of network availability because users performing daily operations in the network need the
network to be available all the time. Availability is serious when it comes to disaster

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planning and recovery. FNU aims at providing a network that is available approximately
99.9 percent of the time and offers an MTBF (mean-time-between-failure) of 6000 hours
and an MTTR (mean-time-to- repair) of less than 90 minutes. Network availability with
these values can never fail even at the students’ submission deadlines. As per students
complaints about network slow down at the time of submission, the network with such
availability metrics can fulfill their request of network availability. A key concern FNU’s
students and staff is concerned about is availability of network at their personal spaces so
that they can work from home as well. Implementing WAT in the FNU network is in
demand from students and staff of the network.
3. Network performance
The overall network statistics assessment to define and analyze if the network is capable
of serving quality of services is termed as network performance. It quantitatively and
qualitatively assesses the performance of the computer network which tells the network
administrator to observe, analyze and improve the services provided by the network.
Network performance is measured as:
Bandwidth: metrics for data transfer rate.
Throughput: the maximum amount of data transferred at one time in the network.
Delay and latency: The extra time taken by the: data than the stipulated one.
Jitter: the difference in data flow within the network due to congestion.
Data loss: Data drop before its delivery to the recipient.
The above mentioned parameters define the overall network performance of the
network. Any of the parameter is failing to achieve its quality in the network leads to
complete drop of network performance. FNU wants to provide a wireless network that is
privately secured for students, staff members and visitors as well. With many users on
the network, FNU needs to be redesigned to fully satisfy the network performance.
FNU’s network must also have a response time less than a second for interactive
applications. The network administrators must increase the bandwidth of the Internet
connection to support new applications in the network.
4. Security (half a page)
Security is a key concern in any network even if it is as small as ten computers. FNU’s big
network is under the threat of security breaches. With wireless network, security comes into
picture since wireless network themselves are less secure. Some security measures are needed
to be employed in the network to make it secure. Network security is the act of safeguarding
network data as well as network devices from intruders and malware attacks. With large
number of users and several numbers of devices in the network, security is a key feature to
work on.
FNU’s network must be redesigned to protect the end to end device connections. Moreover, it is
needed to safeguard network from hackers stealing authentication and authorization rights in
the network. To achieve high level of security, network layer of the protocol stack implements
various algorithms, policies and controls which benefits by providing access to the authorized

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users in the network while prohibiting false users to enter into the network. Security not only
protects your personal data and login credentials in the network but ultimately protects your
reputation. FNU with so many users at a time needs a concrete security measures so that no
reputation will be threatened.
5. Manageability
A network is said to be manageable if it allows most of its tasks to be automated. The FNU
network is very huge with different and diverse tasks and services within the network.
Manageability is required at the IP support end where there are many tasks to work on
especially regarding network management. If more of the tasks are automated, the network
itself reduces most of the burden from IP support staff. These tasks include:
1. Network Configuration
2. Data Backups
3. Load Balancing
4. Network Management
5. Network Monitoring
6. Troubleshooting
7. Updates
The tasks once performed by itself, network is said to be manageable. FNU’s network should
also be redesigned to perform several tasks by its own.
6. Usability
Usability of the network or an application is defined as the ease of access of such
products that helps user to use it by using all its functions with utmost ease. The network
usability is how effortlessly and easily a network user can use the network without having
issues like operational issues or connection issues. The FNU network is very complex and
supports various users’ at a time and hence requires the great degree of usability. The
network and its applications should be so very easy that the students and staff members
must handle it very easily. The applications in the network includes university website
that manages students, their submissions, results display, etc. Network usability plays an
important part when the network or its applications are difficult to use.
With usability, network administrators can assess the level of difficulty and redesign its
applications for ease of access to its users. FNU’s network must be easy to operate for
the students and staff so as to make it effective in use for them. Students in the network
are very much new to this kind of environment hence usability must be achieved by the
network for making it easier to use it. Usability in the network can be accomplished by
first analyzing which areas are difficult in use and hence redesigning it may help in
attaining usability.
7. Adaptability

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The network is said to be adaptable of small changes done in the network that does not affect
the overall performance. The FNU’s network is currently using wired services but now FNU’s
administrators are planning to provide wireless services provisions to students and staff
members. The new network must be designed with wireless provisions and hence it must be
adaptable to new changes in the network. The network adaptability is the ability of the network
to respond positively to the change and hence fit into the new circumstances. Repair the IP
addressing scheme of the old network since the network is planned to migrate to the wireless
technology.
FNU network is requires all its users to use bring your own device policy in which personal
devices of the students can also be connected into the network without any difficulty or
connection issues. Availability of network will allow its students to connect their personal
devices with utmost ease. Moreover, FNU is planning to implement the WAT policy in which the
university network will be available all over the globe so as to help its staff to work at home. In
order to make these two policies implemented in the network, FNU needs to implement a
network with high availability.
8. Affordability
With implementation of security, usability, availability and other technical goals in the network, it
becomes very difficult for the network administrators to keep the network affordable. With the security
concerns, the new devices and software needs to be employed in the network. These devices are
somewhat costly and may vary in price when you need it again in next few years. To make a network
available and usable, it also requires a good sum of amount. Moreover, to make it manageable is a hectic
task since it is available, usable and secure. Managing a huge network is also not easy to cope up with.
FNU’s network must be affordable in cost since its new requirements are very high. Some important
concerns affecting affordability of the network are as given below:
1. Adding new wireless devices in the network may lead to extra investments.
2. With the employment of new security features, the network needs to add new supporting
technologies and network security software to accomplish the new requirements related to security
concerns.
3. Wireless technology is more prone to security threats and hence new QoS support is needed to be
employed in the network.
Existing Network
This section briefly describes the current infrastructure implemented at all the campuses in the
university. As stated before, all the regional and metropolitan campuses are using the same size of
network, devices and staff. Following are the hardware specifications currently used at all university
sites.
Hardware at Metro and Regional campuses
 Computer Labs: 10, 24 PCs each with Windows OS and a printer
 Staff PCs: Windows 7 (dual monitors), headsets and webcams.
 Networked Printers: 4 in each faculty.
 Local Network Storage: 1
 Switched Ethernet: 100Base-Tx

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Hardware at main campus
 Computer Labs: 50, 24 PCs each with Windows 10 OS and a printer
 Staff PCs: Windows 10 (dual monitors), headsets, webcams and VoIP video phones.
 Networked Printers: 20 capable of scanning and photocopying.
 Local Network Storage: 1
 Switched Ethernet: 100Base-Tx
Hardware at Operations site
 Servers: Windows and Linux Servers capable of operations like mail, DNS, DHCP, web,
authentication, domain controlling, SAN, database, load balancing, blackboard and video
streaming. The servers at operations site also support FNU’s online learning management and
students’ information management. It also handles ERP services.
 Staff PCs: Windows 8 OS.
Hardware at Backup site
The backup site comes into picture immediately if the operations site fails. It has the same
infrastructure as a backup site and deals with backing up all the data from operations site
periodically. The backup site is far away from the main campus and requires same hardware as
operations site. Once the failure in the network or break down in detected, the backup site loads all
the data from its servers to the operations site with few minutes to revive the network. The services
provided by the operations site are all mirrored by backup site. The backup site is barely used site
but it is of great importance if operations site fails. It helps in recovering the network data.

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Current Wide Area Networks at FNU
Figure 1 Block Diagram of Current WAN at FNU
As shown in above diagram, FNU has 5 sites connected in mesh topology with Virtual Private
LANs (VPLS) using point-to-point connection. Mesh topology ensures redundancy between
operations site, backup site and main campus. The operations site stores data of the network.
There are 5 regional and 10 metropolitan campuses each of which are connected to main
campus, operations site and backup site via Frame Relay permanent virtual circuits (PVC).
Main, Metro and Regional Campus Network at FNU
Each network device at main campus is connected through the 100Base-TX Switched Ethernet LANs but
since the network improvements are decided to be made, modern switched Ethernets are planned to be
added in place of 100Base-TX Switched Ethernet LANs. Staff members at FNU are divided as:
Regional and Metro Campuses (250 staff)
Approximate Number of students 2,000
Administrative Staff 50
Academic Staff 150
Management Staff 50
Main Campus (2000 staff)

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Approximate Number of students 15,000
Administrative Staff 500
Academic Staff 1,000
Management Staff 500
Operations and Backup Site Network at FNU
Site name #Staff Operations
Operations Site 100 Engineers 1. Technical support of data center
2. Networking
3. Maintenance
4. Application Development
Backup Site 100 Engineers
The Operations facility and backup facility is also supported by 100Base-TX Switched Ethernet LANs.
Functions of each staff members are distinct and important at FNU. Academic staff at all the
campuses is responsible for teaching different courses on campus. There are 7 main faculties at FNU
including business, mathematics, health science, social science, computer science, humanities and
physical science. Administrative staff looks up the admission process of new students, manages
students’ records and handles all the administrative tasks related to FNU and its students.
Management Staff includes information technology to handle all the IT related work related to
network and web application, human resources and senior management deals with recruitment of
staff. In last 3 years the students’ enrollment at FNU has tripled in number and the staff members are
increased at double rate.
The details of IT infrastructure are as follows:
1. Every campus building is equipped with high-end core switch.
2. Every floor in every building contains 24-port Ethernet switch that connects the students
and staff PCs. Each of these switches is in turn connected to the high-end core switch.
3. Floor switches follows IEEE 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol. These are 100Base-TX
layer-2 switches
4. The network is assigned with IP address 192.168.0.0 with the devices having same
broadcast domain except the public servers.
5. The server located at the operations facility is DHCP server for the FNU’s network. IP
addressing is done with DHCP.
6. The DHCP server runs the Windows-based network management software package which
monitors the switches by using SNMP and RMON.
7. Email, Web and DNS servers are also located at operations facility.
8. Multiservice Platform router has a default route to WAN which does not run a routing
protocol. This router is a NAT-Firewall for the network.
9. Local file storage is offered at each campus from where data backup is taken at regular
interval to the data servers at operations facility.
Network Infrastructure Issues

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The issues related to the old WAN at FNU are as follows:
1. Academic board of FNU identified that the business process of the university highly depends
on the amalgamation of systems and services. This process is very complex and hence it
makes a major issue in the network. This concern to the overall growth of the FNU.
2. The senior executive addressed another issue with FNU network that the university spends a
good sum of amount to build and maintain those systems that are less critical while ignoring
those services that are important to focus on. It suggests that the FNU must focus on
improving the learning and teaching quality in the cost-effective manner. So that most of the
students with economic issues can also get to learn from FNU.
3. The FNU fails at providing best services to its users hence; it should focus on improving
current network infrastructures and migrate towards modern devices and technologies to
guarantee fewer problems in the network. The possible solution to this issue can be aimed at
migrating all its services and applications to the cloud.
4. The current network at FNU is preferably secured but its improvements towards wireless
services may bring lots of security concerns. With this, new authentication and authorization
schemes will be needed to be employed for blocking the internal and external network
attacks. The hackers at the internal level can hack all the important files at files server and
may spread virus within the network which might then be difficult to cope up.
5. FNU is not using any measure for disaster recovery other than backing up its data to
operations and backup facility sites. More focus should be made on prevention of such
disaster or breakdown of network. FNU network must be redesigned to employ new security
schemes suitable for wireless network so that new students or staff devices in the network
may not create any havoc in the network.
Network Traffic Analysis
Network Traffic Flow
The FNU network uses following application and enterprise services running at all the
campuses.
Application / Service Description Users Traffic Flow
Academic and students
work
Students perform their relevant
task such as writing assignments
and codes (students from
computer science faculty) and
saving them at data servers in the
network for further use. Students
use the printing facility to print
their documents within the
campus. Also academic staff uses
the application for saving their
documents and printing them.
Students and
academic staff
End PC to Data
server
Data Server to
Printers
Email Service using SMTP Email service is used at high level
by all the users of the network by
using MS Outlook Desktop.
Students and
University staff
Between end PCs
and Email Server

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Web services
(HTTP and HTTPS)
Web services are used by all the
users to surf internet and access
online information.
Students and
University staff
End PCs to Web
Servers and vice
versa
Online Library Main library of FNU is located at
headquarters but regional and
metro campuses also have small
library facility which lets
students’ and staff to access
online library.
Students and
University staff
End PC to Data
servers
Higher Performance
Computing
Higher Performance Computing is
located at operations site which is
used mainly by nation’s research
centers
Students,
staff and
external
partners
End PCs to
Data servers
Distance Learning All the seven faculties offer online
learning for distance students via
online sessions that uses video
streaming.
Students and
Academic staff
End PCs to web
servers and
data servers at
FNU
Moodle Management of learning
Resources offered to the students
off-campus
Students and
Academic staff
End PCs to web
servers and data
servers at FNU
ERP Human Resource Management
and SAP Enterprise Resource
Planning
Administrative
and Management
staff
Staff PCs to Data
Servers and vice
versa
Student Information
System
The University administration staff
uses this system to keep track of
class registrations, enrolments
and student records.
Administrative
and academic
staff
Staff PCs to
Data Servers
and vice versa
Data Analytics Business intelligence Platform to
find, explore, and share data-
driven insights within FNU.
University
Senior
Management
Staff PCs to
Data Servers
and vice versa
GoogleDocs Online word processor to create
and format documents and work
collaboratively.
University staff Staff PCs to
Google Wen
servers and vice
versa
Office 365 To access Microsoft Office apps on
Windows, macOS, iOS, Android,
and Windows mobile. It also
Students and
University staff
Staff PCs to
Email Server
and vice versa