Learning Outcomes Assessed
• Design and implement software models of networking devices
• Analyse performance characteristics of a communication network and perform “what-if” scenarios
Scenario
Interior Solutions is a small, but growing, company specialising in the design of interiors for Large Yachts and Motor boats. The company currently employs 14 staff in their London headquarters (1 Manager, 3 Administrators and 10 designers) and 7 in their Southampton branch office (2 Administrators, 5 designers). The company has two LANs: one in their London office and one in their Southampton office. The two LANs are connected by a leased T1 connection.
London Network
The London network comprises 10 CAD workstations used by the designers and 4 general purpose PCs used by the administrators and the manager. The network is Ethernet based and operates at 100 Mbps. The company currently employs three servers in their London office for Email, Web and File storage.
Southampton Network
The Southampton network comprises 2 general purpose PCs used by the administrators and 5 CAD workstations used by the designers. The network is a 100Mbps switched Ethernet.

There is no local storage on the workstations and PCs and all data is stored on the London HQ servers.

WAN
The networks are connected by Ethernet routers over a leased T1 WAN connection.
User Profiles
An audit of the network traffic has taken place. The following information was produced:
There are three user profiles for modelling purposes:
Administrator
• Medium database
• Medium email
• Heavy web browsing
Manager
• Light database
• Medium email
• Light web browsing
Developer
• Heavy database
• Light email
• Light browsing
• Heavy file transfer
The audit team noted that the generic application profiles worked well for the manager and administrator but found that the developers, who were storing and retrieving very large CAD files from and to the File Server. The average size of the CAD files was 100 Mbytes but there was significant variation.

The company have approached you to analyse the performance of their network to ascertain whether:
1. The network would support expansion of the company with another branch office, the same as the Southampton office, but based in Plymouth with a similar WAN connection but connected to Southampton not London, to save cost. Is this feasible or is there a better solution?
2. The network would support upgrading of the existing analogue telephone system to a Cisco based VoIP architecture – assume all users would migrate to VoIP
3. The network would support videoconferencing facilities on all sites – assume one videoconferencing suite per site.

Deliverables

A written report comprising:
1. A network topology diagram using pre-existing components from the toolbox only.
2. Application traffic profiles and User profiles based on the information provided by the audit team
3. A simulation of the system to ascertain whether the existing network architecture would support some or all of the proposed upgrades
4. Recommendations to the client on the current performance of the system, and what, if any, upgrades would be needed to support the proposed changes.

Marking Scheme

1. Network topology diagram (20 marks)
2. Traffic generation using application and user profiles (30 marks)
3. Analysis of simulation data (20 marks)
4. Recommendations (20 marks)
5. Report Quality (10 marks)
Total 100 marks.