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Axia College
The ACME Manufacturing company, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is growing at a fast pace. Located at the Atlanta campus are two offices, one houses the operations, marketing, administration, and accounting sections. The other building has offices for the engineering and sales departments. ACME is spread throughout the United States; with offices in New York, Chicago, and Phoenix. They have also recently acquired a facility in China. With the recent expansion, ACME will need a new wide area network (WAN) and a state-of-the-art phone system to ensure the company operates at optimal levels. To make administration of the ACME WAN easier the network should be designed using the star topology. With this configuration, each branch office will have only a direct connection back to the headquarters in Atlanta. The type of connection to each location stateside can vary on the size of the remote office. I would recommend going with a minimum of a full T1 line or even a T3. The China location can be connected via a satellite connection leased by the company. The following figure is a graphical representation of the WAN configuration.
Atlanta
T1
T1
T1
New York
Phoenix
Chicago
China
Satellite
WAN Layout for ACME Manufacturing
IP Ranges For modeling purposes, let’s assume ACME is using a class B network address; for example 192.168.x.x. To help keep the individual departments separate, the network administration will need to configure a few subnets. Each subnet on the network will be a VLAN, or virtual local area network. In order for us to have the proper amount of subnets, the subnet mask will be set to 255.255.240.0. This will give ACME a maximum of sixteen subnets and 4,094 hosts in each subnet.
Hardware Requirements New Cisco switches and routers will supply the routing necessary for Acme’s data. Cisco Catalyst switches will provide VLAN functionality; these switches can accept broadcast
References: Regan, P. E. (2004). Wide area networks. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Ou, G. (2006, June 28). IP subnetting made easy. Retrieved August 2, 2010, from TechRepublic: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6089187.html Yudkowsky, C. (2002, July). Voice Over IP vs PBX. Retrieved August 2, 2010, from VoIP News: http://www.voip-news.com/byte2.htm