Question

You’re a network engineer and this is your first day with your new job. Your job is with the company Castle Entertainment. Castle Entertainment has been selling tv/movie memorabilia for many years and has made a truck load of money . The owner (who wishes to remain anonymous) has decided that now is right time to update his operations.

We pick up this story as you walk in the front door of the company full of optimism and nerves then you notice something is missing – you don’t see any computers, printers, switches, cabling, routers or even a single plug socket on a wall. The entire floor is empty, not even the mandatory plant in sight. The owner (who still wishes to remain anonymous) suddenly appears carrying a single a sheet of paper in his right hand.

You exchange pleasantry handshakes with the owner (you found out his first name is Richard) then he hands you the sheet of paper. You stare at the sheet of paper and you suddenly realize what your first task entails.

You are required to design and build the company’s new network from scratch.

As you begin to understand the enormity of your first task, one line on the sheet of paper catches your eye. The company will be operating on all the 3 floors of the building.

You compose yourself and you flip the sheet of paper to reveal in detail what Richard wants for his new company network.

Richard’s Requirements
· Sales department will be located on the first floor and have twenty four full time sales people.

· Administration and billing will be located on the second floor with eight staff members.

· Ricard’s three receptionists, Richard’s six bodyguards and Richards’s office will on the third floor.

· Standard PCs will be used on the first and second floors, but laptops will be required by third floor personnel.

· Each department will require a network printer and Richard will require his own printer.

· Richard wants you to assign each department to a separate network. Richard does consider himself as a separate department.

· You can create your own IP addressing scheme but make sure each department is on a separate subnet.

· Richard knows how expensive routers can actually be so he only wants one router for the entire company.

· Richard wants to be able to ping any computer from his computer at any time, in particular the sales people.

Requirements

You are required to complete three tasks.

Create a physical topology of Richard’s requirements and include the following

Location of PCs, cables, printers, WAPs, switch (s), router (s) and anything else you feel is required

Answer 1

The answer involves designing a multi-layer network topology, with separate subnets for each department and VLAN for Richard

Step-by-step explanation:

The correct answer to the task of designing and building a new company network from scratch involves creating a detailed physical topology for Castle Entertainment, which includes the placement of PCs, cables, printers, wireless access points (WAPs), switches, and routers.

If we start on the first floor, the sales department will require 24 workstations connected to a network switch that will also connect a network printer. Standard Ethernet cabling can be used to connect each PC to the switch.

The second floor with the administration and billing department again needs workstations, connected to another switch with eight ports, and one network printer. The third floor will have personnel with laptops that require wireless connectivity, provided by WAPs.

Additionally, a network printer and a separate printer for Richard would be directly connected to the network but possibly in a private VLAN.

From an IP addressing perspective, three subnets are required: one for each floor to segregate traffic and provide a layer of security between departments.

Since Richard desires a single router, a Layer 3 switch may be beneficial to handle inter-VLAN routing between the subnets created for each floor and Richard’s office. This setup ensures Richard can ping any computer throughout the company.

Lastly, a firewall should be considered for protecting the network from external threats and managing Internet access.