Project: Corporate Network Redesign

The designs presented here correspond to different steps of a corporate project.

The client's internal network was gradually redesigned to increase security and availability.

Timing depended exclusively on the needs of the company. Each step of the project was implemented at a time when it had become necessary to accomodate the company's needs and facilitate further growth.

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Original Network Design In the original design, all three floors are connected directly to the router. System management, sales, administration, and classrooms compete for bandwidth. A computer savvy person entering the network from a classroom could gain access to sales and administration data. At peak hours, mission-critical classrooms database offers slow response.

Step 1: New Physical Network Design All the devices on each floor are connected to a switch which is conected to the router. This new setting speeds up intrafloor communication. It also decreases the amount of data circulating on the backbone, thus de facto speeding up interfloor communication. Database response time decreases dramatically in the classrooms located on the first floor, and noticeably in the other classrooms.

Step 2: Configure VLANs System management, administration, sales and classrooms are on different VLANs. Corporate data is secured against intrusion even from insiders. Communication speed between the classrooms and their database is dramatically increased. Still, mission-critical classrooms are at the mercy of a failure of their database server

Step 3: Increase Redundancy One database server per floor ensure an almost perfect uptime of the mission-critical classrooms. An additional database/file server decreases response time for the administration and sales departments.