Question

Your assignment is to complete a network diagram for a small company. You will place a number of network elements on the diagram and label them appropriately. A network diagram is important to communicate the design features of a network between network administrators, system administrators, and cyber-security analysts. It helps to create a shared mental model between these different technologists, yet each will have their own perspective on what is important to have documented on the diagram. Please review a description of ABC Corporation’s network resources and how they are allocated.

ABC Corporation’s Network Description

ABC Corporation is a small business in the heart of Central Pennsylvania. They provide services to their clients all over the region. The three-story main office building is where all of the employees report to work each day. There are no remote users. ABC Corporation is a very traditional business. While they have a computer network and are connected to the Internet, they aren’t very fancy and don’t yet have a need for telecommuting, wireless networks, or smart phones. All of their computers are desktop machines and are connected with wired Ethernet connections. All of the network wiring is CAT-6 twisted pair wiring that goes from the office location to a wiring closet. There is one wiring closet on each floor. Each closet is connected to the basement wiring closet via fiber.

There are several departments of the company. The administrative office has ten employees including the CEO, executive Vice-President, a human resources manager, and several assistants and secretaries. The finance office has fifteen employees. Both of these divisions are on the third floor.

The second floor has the Sales and R&D departments. There are a total of twenty employees in the Sales Department and includes sales executives and assistants. All of the sales department personnel have laptop computers, but they are still connected via the wired network. The R&D department has ten engineers who have two computers each – one in their office and one in their lab spaces.

The first floor has the shipping/receiving department, manufacturing department, and the receptionist. The receptionist shares a computer with the night watchman, since they work opposite shifts. There are twenty people in manufacturing, but they only use three computers to enter their production details into the company’s ERP system. The shipping/receiving department has six people, each with a computer that connects to UPS, Fedex, and USPS systems, prints packaging labels and shipping documents. There is also a conference room/training room on the first floor with a multimedia system that includes a podium computer, projector, and all of the bells and whistles.

The basement houses the maintenance department, information technology, and the mail room. The mail room clerk doesn’t use the computers at all. The two maintenance workers have computers at their desks that they use to enter reports of work performed. The IT Department has seven employees, each with a desktop computer. They also manage the server farm, which includes two domain controllers, one print server, one mail server, one database server, one internal web server, one external web server (on the DMZ interface of the firewall), a file server, a special server for the ERP system, and a backup server.

Layer 2/3 Network Devices

Each floor needs to have an Ethernet switch in its network closet. Determine the number of ports that are needed on each floor. Don’t forget the basement. The server farm and DMZ each will need to have its own switch, separated from the users’ network.

Each switch connects to a centralized router on a different interface, giving one subnetwork for each floor of the network, plus one for the server farm, one for the DMZ, and one for the Internet. Determine how many ports the router needs.

IP Address Assignments

The router will perform Network Address Translation between the local network and the Internet. Therefore, for each sub-network, assign a CIDR /24 sized network from the IANA private range of 172.28.0.0/16. One network should get 172.28.1.0/24, the next should get 172.28.2.0/24, the next should get 172.28.3.0/24 etc. While you could optimize the use of the IP range by using smaller subnets, this is not required in this assignment.

Create a Network Diagram

Your network diagram needs to include the following elements:

• An Internet Service Provider Network (represented as a cloud)
• Router with enough ports to meet the needs of the organization
• A switch for each floor – you will need to identify how many ports each switch on each floor needs to have
• You DO NOT need to show every single computer on your diagram. However, you need to show groups of computers, plus their use. So, if there are 5 people in the same department, you can show all 5 computers with one icon/glyph and label it appropriately.
• Each grouping of computers needs to have the IP Address range documented on the diagram. Assign the x.x.x.1 address of each network to the appropriate port on the router.

Network Documentation

Your network design document needs to explain each element of the network. Each Layer two (switch) and Layer three (Router) device needs to be described in terms of number of ports. The number of computers for each department and floor also needs to be documented. The IP address ranges need to be explained – including the IP Address range that you assigned, the number of IP Addresses that the subnetwork will use, and the number of IP addresses that remain unused in that subnet.

What to Turn In

For assignments that require you to submit Visio work, please export your file and submit as a PDF. Also, please submit your original Visio file.
You also need to turn in a .doc/.docx file that explains your network diagram elements. Include snapshots from your network diagram in your .doc/.docx file – and annotate your diagram snapshots to better help your explanation of your network.

Answer 1