Designing and Implementing a Small Corporate Network for Sysol Ltd.

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This project details the design and implementation of a small corporate network for Sysol Ltd.

RESEARCH PROJECT
Project Proposal Form
Student Name:
STU number:
You will be expected to work with your Supervisor to complete all sections of this Project
Proposal Form. Once complete, you will be required to submit your form to your supervisor
as stated in your allocation e-mail.
Proposed Dissertation Title
NETWORKING PROJECT – SETUP SMALL CORPORATE NETWORK
Rationale
Nowadays, many people – especially youngsters – are starting up new small businesses.
Even if the company can, they do not want or plan to hire a professional network designer
or an expert. There is a company Sysol Ltd having 3 interconnected departments which
are Information Technology/IT, Marketing and HR departments. The project proposal is to
design a computer network for small company Sysol Ltd. that require small setup of
infrastructure having 40 to 50 computers, a file sharing server, a print server, connecting
devices like cables and switches, networking and routing devices like 2 routers for small
number of personnel working in a small office so that they can perform basic
functionalities like working in a network, file and information sharing, printing services,
connecting to accessing internet.

Thus, the purpose of this project proposal is to demonstrate a small corporate computer
network architecture for small businesses like Sysol Ltd which is inexpensive, fully
functional, and easy to deploy, maintain and manage. A network on Cisco packet tracer
has been designed with the required features. The attached network diagram
demonstrates how a small corporate network can be designed for small businesses
providing and facilitating a basic set of required functionalities.
Objectives
This project proposal is for designing and setting up a fully functional and inexpensive
computer network for Sysol Ltd. The objectives and outcomes of this project are
described below:-
 The project will help understand the concepts of computer networking better and
apply these concepts and knowledge practically.
 The very first objective is to design a prototype and plan for Sysol Limited.
 Since the Sysol Ltd has 3 main departments – IT, HR and Marketing, the employees
of all these 3 departments will be able to communicate with each of the
computers inside the same network over the Local Area Network (LAN).
 Also, all the 3 departments will be able in order to communicate with the public
network by accessing the internet.
 With the help of this project employees of each department of Sysol Ltd will be
able to access the file server for easy and faster file sharing over the LAN and
printing services over the LAN as well.
 The designed network prototype will be implemented first on the Cisco packet
tracer to test all the functionality, IP addressing in the network, and
troubleshooting any potential network errors. Once the network design is
successful on the Cisco packet tracer, later on, it will be implemented practically.
 The major outcome of this project will be a small corporate network which will be
inexpensive, cost-efficient to setup, effective for Sysol and easier to manage.
Literature review
Traditional Computer Networks:
For small corporate computer networks, the very basic logic that follows is the ISP
sending some wireless information to a modem which further connects to a router in the
network. This router then connects with the hubs or switches which further connects the
desktops and laptops in either wireless or wired connections. There are five major types
of configuration to link the computers together in a network are a bus, token ring, star,
tree, and mesh. With the context of the Sysol Ltd company, 2 major types of networks will
be used and configured. These network types are 1. Local Area Network – which will be

used to connect the devices together inside the office premise and 2. Wide Area Network
– which will be used to connect the internal network devices such as laptops and desktops
to the external public network or the Internet. One router will be configured for the LAN
and another will be configured for the WAN.
Apart from print and file server and operations, the designed network can also be used to
share other peripherals like copiers and scanners. The same network can also be used to
backup and store the information on a simple NAS (Network Attached Storage) device or
the web using cloud computing. NAS devices often generally have their own hard disk
drives and can be available over the local area network using a web browser which allows
the configuration and management of the hard drives and also the way hard drives back
up the information from a computer. The wireless networks can also be used to allow to
use a wide variety of devices in the network such as wireless cameras.
Computer Network – A Future Reference Model:
According to Hassan (2012), revolutionary designs are required to be devised for future
computer networks by using CORM (Concern-Oriented Reference Model). The CORM
represents computer networks like a distributed network of software dependent systems.
Hassan explains that the CORM can be designed along the 2 major dimensions which are
a vertical and horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension is used to address the
configuration of building blocks of networking and its structure. On the other hand, the
horizontal dimension is used to address the interaction and communication among all the
building block which were previously designed, constructed and formulated. Concern
Oriented Reference Model categorize the space of design into behavior, structure, and
function. Concern oriented reference model follows the bottom-up approach to
constructing the network in a recursive manner. Simulating network architecture based
on the CORM is possible for ad hoc networks in small corporates since the architectures
based on CORM are proved to be easily adaptable and better to evolve easily than the
traditional computer networks. (Hassan & Eltoweissy, 2012 )
The corporate networks are initially small but grows with time and become large and
complex. In such complex networks self-organizations, adaption, and evolution can be
helpful to bring stability and emergent behavior. The self-organization can be referred to
as the component’s behavior raised due to communication between each other. Adaption
can be defined as the behavior of the computer or other networking components in
response to all the changes in surroundings. Evolution can be helpful in adaption at higher
levels using intelligent means and also self-organizing. Evolution can also bring the
monitoring functionalities into the corporate computer networks. Thus, in this way the
concern-oriented reference models can be proved very helpful, useful, effective and cost-
efficient in computer networks for small corporates such as Sysol Ltd.
Limitations in Current Computer Networks:
Currently, there are no ways to access and share a single internet connection concurrently
even though the internet is very easily acquirable and setup. In the corporates like Sysol

Ltd, many employees may require and access the internet connection simultaneously but
it is a comparatively expensive investment to provide internet connection simultaneously
to multiple employees. Another significant expense might be the requirement of ISP
account to allow users to access the internet connection at the same times. In addition, at
earlier times it was in practice of Internet Service Providers to limit its customer to access
a single Dial-up connection. The client computers will remain inaccessible until the
establishment of the Dial-up connection.
In a network (whether private or public network), the data is transmitted from one point
to another using a set of well-defined communicating network protocols. Two major
protocols are Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) which are
together called TCP/IP. On the internet whatever the communication happens, takes
place using these 2 protocols. For instance, TCP/IP is used when an application tries to
access a web page from one machine to another (Ahlers et al. 2014).
After a critical review of some of the literature, it has been found that a new computer
network can be designed for the small corporates like Sysol providing all the required
facilities and features in a cost-effective manner. The limitations and drawbacks that are
mentioned above of currently designed small networks, standards and protocols are
necessary to be kept in mind while designing and configuring the corporate network for
Sysol Ltd. The proposed network will be suitable for the Sysol Ltd considering the number
of employees currently working in the office, the future growth and the general and basic
requirements of the company to communicate internally and externally using this
network.
Methodology
This project aims at designing and configuring a small corporate computer network for a
company named Sysol Limited. After getting consent from the At the beginning research
is performed on the Sysol Ltd. and its networking requirements after which it was found
that the company has 3 different and separate departments. Since, this project is to
design a computer network for Sysol Ltd., at the very initial stage a prototype network will
be designed which further will be implemented on the Cisco packet tracer. In this project,
there are 3 departments which are HR, IT and Marketing. Assuming that each department
will have at least 100 – 150 employees, a network is to design that can accommodate an
approx. of 400 people in the same building. The network for the Sysol Limited will be
designed keeping in mind all the necessary, company established and ISO specific
standard that will ensure the reliability and integrity of the network.

Approach to be followed:
The approach being followed here in this project to design the network will be modular.
In the modular approach, the network designing and implementation task will be divided
into smaller modules and these modules will be achieved separately step by step. The
network will be scalable so that it can grow in the future if need be. The network will
follow the client-server model to connect the computing devices with each other through
a server. The single server will act as the print server, file server, and also for
administrating and managing the clients and other connected devices. In order to set up a
client-server infrastructure, a server operating system and a server-specific configured
device will be required. Windows server and Linux servers are 2 most suited servers for
this purpose. Furthermore, since each client subsystem can be configured as a
workstation or server or both, it is envisioned that a modular system of the present type
would be able to efficiently link to multiple data networks (public and/or private) external
to the system.
Network Requirements:
Table 1: Table of requirements
Device Quantity Specifications
Router 2 Router1 – Cisco Generic router (Internal
Networking)
Router2 – Cisco 2811 series router (ISP router)
Switch 4 Cisco Series 2960 layer 2 switches
(1 for each of the 3 departments; 1 for ISP
server)
Cables As per the
requirements
Copper Crossover (Connecting switches), Copper
Straight Through (connecting workstations),
Serial DCE (Connecting routers)
Workstations 100/department Laptops and desktops
Server 2 Server1 (File, Print, Windows Server ADDS),
Server2 (ISP server)
IP Addressing for the network:
Table 2: Table of IP addressing
Device Port IP address Subnet Address
Router1 Serial 0/0 192.168.2.1 255.255.255.0
Router1 Fast Ethernet 0/1 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0
Router2 Serial 0/0 192.168.2.2 255.255.255.0
Switch1 Fast Ethernet 0/1 192.168.5.0 255.255.255.0
Switch2 Fast Ethernet 0/1 192.168.4.0 255.255.255.0
Switch3 Fast Ethernet 0/1 192.168.3.0 255.255.255.0

File & Print Server
Srv1
Fast Ethernet 0/1 192.168.6.0 255.255.255.0
Lan Server Srv0 Fast Ethernet 0/1 192.168.7.3 255.255.255.0
Explanation of Adopted Approach to design and set up a small corporate network:
Setting up and configuring a business network starts with the routers and switches of the
business-grade so as to provide reliable and secure communication within and outside the
network. In the office, 2 routers will be used out of which one router will connect
switches of the office departments with each other and the second router will connect
with the ISP router to provide internet access in all the departments. Router 1 will be
configured with class C to connect directly with Switch1 and network 192.168.2.0 with
router 2 using Serial DCE cable. Router 2 will be further connected to the ISP router to
provide internet access to the computers and server inside the network. The file and print
server will be connected to the router and with all the 3 switches so that employees from
all the 3 departments can access it. The copper cross over cables will connect all the 3
switches with each other. Router 2 will be a part of a wide area network and router 1, 3
switches, file and print server, and computers will be part of the local area network.
Measures to Enable Security in The Proposed Network Design:
Enabling and providing security in a network is must and very crucial to establish a reliable
and secure connection and communication inside a network. The provisioning of security
features in a network starts with the very basic implementations which are mentioned
below:-
1. Spreading awareness among the employees to not to share the passwords and
business critical and confidential information with unintended parties.
2. Enabling passwords and secrets on all of the routers and switches.
3. Implementing Access Control Lists or ACLs on the edge routers.
4. Establishing firewall rules on each and every desktop or laptop.
5. Setting up VLANs and VPNs inside the network.
6. Configure and ensure authentication and authorization on different levels.
References:
Ahlers, T.F., Averbuch, A.H., Marl, C.B., Owens, J.A., Furlan, J.L., Kaplan, J. and
Braunstein, A., Cisco Technology Inc, 2014, System and method for simplifying secure
network setup. U.S. Patent 8,649,297.
Hassan, H. and Eltoweissy, M. 2012, ‘CORM: A reference model for future computer
networks’, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 35(2), pp.668-680.
Helen, D. and Arivazhagan, D., 2014. Applications, advantages, and challenges of ad hoc
networks. JAIR, 2(8), pp.453-7.
Solutions, S., Center, C. and Resources, S., 2019. How to Setup a network for Small

Businesses. [online] Cisco. Available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/small-
business/resource-center/networking/primer-building-small-office-network.html
[Accessed 25 Feb. 2019].
Suárez, F., Nuño, P., Granda, J. and García, D., 2015, ‘Computer networks performance
modeling and simulation’. Modeling and Simulation of Computer Networks and Systems,
187-223.