Ntc 360 - Network and Telecommunication Concepts - Telecommunications

Networking and Telecommunications

Team B Assignment

Terry Anderson

Mary James

Russell Thee

NTC 360/ Network and Telecommunication Concepts

Table of Contents

Introduction

Technology Involved

Telephone System

Network Setup

Cost

Sampling of Companies

Possible Future Trends

Global Implications

Conclusion

Introduction

We have been hired to design a small network for a company that will utilize the newest technology out there and give each person the capability to work from the office as well as on the road. This company has ten people and will be working from home and on the road quite often. The best solution would be to set up a wireless network with additional security and the use if Internet Protocol phones. We will also make a push to hire a full time systems administrator to handle all the security issues and the overall maintenance of the network.

First we need to stress the importance of a full time systems administrator to work from the site as well as on call 24 hours a day. We are going to use a wireless network as well as IP phones and from time to time they are going to experience connectivity issues as well as authentication problems logging into the servers remotely. The main point we must stress to the customer is the security issues that affect every network. The network will need constant monitoring and updates due to the nature of the business and the virtual private network that will be utilized for off site connectivity.

Technology Involved

The proposed hardware list will contain 3 physical servers, a Cisco router, 2 black and white laser printers, a color laser printer, 12 laptops, 12 IP phones, a server rack, cabling, and wireless PCMCIA cards. We want to make sure there are a few laptops and phones configured for users who are experiencing problems. This list will continue to grow as we start to install the network and get everything configured properly and continue on with the testing. We must also ensure we have the proper licensing for all the servers to include Microsoft Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange. We will run Symantec Antivirus software on each of the laptops as well.

Telephone System

The telephone system that we are going to put into place is a Mitel system consisting of twelve 5220 IP phones. This system will consist of a voice mail system, and the ability to take your phone home and all your calls will be forwarded to that phone making it easier for our staff to work from home without the customers knowing. The hardware involved in the setup of this system is a PC for voice mail administration, and two switches. An HP 2626 Procurve and a PowerDsine 6024. Both of these switches will act as data and voice transmission switches with the PowerDsine 6024 also providing power through the CAT 5 cable to the phones themselves. There are a couple pieces of software that comes with the phones. The first piece of software allows a user to receive their voice mail through their PC. It is just like checking your e-mail except they will need to have either attached or built in speakers to actually hear the voice mail. The other piece of software is for each individual user to take home and install on their PC. This will allow them to use their phones from home as if they were still in there office. A user at the office can dial the extension of the user that is at home and his phone will ring. This is an invaluable feature a small office that might have individuals working out of there home office.

Network Setup

There are many different ways we could have designed this network to meet the needs of the company. This is a small company that will remain around ten systems on their network. We could have gone the easy route and created a ring topology that connected all the systems together and everyone just stored data on their own system. This would cause many problems as people are frequently not working form the office and the use of laptops would not be feasible. This topology would not be in the best interest for this company.

We also looked at a mesh topology that would connect every system to each other. This would not cause as many problems as the ring but we did not want to use this topology in the environment we are trying to create. The network needs to utilize many different resources as well as maintain a level of security that will be able to use wireless as well as off site authentication. This company does much of their business outside of the work place and the need for this level of security is key to the success of their operations.

We will start by installing the servers in the rack and ensure the UPS is working properly and the servers stay powered up in the event of the power going down. Once the servers are mounted in the rack we can start installing Microsoft Server 2003 on the main server and ensure all the proper security patches are loaded and then run a vulnerability scan. We want to make sure all the proper ports are open or closed to ensure no one can gain access to their network. The router will also need to be configured at this time. The router will be a major factor in the security of our network.

Once Microsoft Server 2003 is loaded we will create accounts for all the users and assign them to different group. We are creating two different groups based on the customers needs. We will have one group that is for the five employees that deal with strictly stateside business. The other five employees will be assigned to another group that deals strictly with overseas business. Each user will be required to create a ten character password that has to have at least one lower case and one capitol letter, a numeric character as well as a unique character. This will be one measure to help maintain the security of the network.

While the servers are being set up we will have another member of our team creating an image to use for all the laptops. We will load one laptop with Windows XP and Office 2003. We will need to make sure