You and your fellow team members are employees of a consulting firm called “Network Solutions”. Your firm’s responsibilities include determining the following:
• What type of network would best suit each particular customer (e.g., peer-to-peer or client/server)?
• Does the customer need a LAN and/or a WAN?
• What type of network topology will best suit the customer?
• Which cabling media will meet the customer’s needs now and in the near future?
• Brands of hardware and software needed by the customer and translating that information into the number of servers, workstations, and licenses that will serve your customer’s business network and wholly support their business.
As a network administrator assigned to this team, you are being sent to the site of a new business named, Retail/Wholesale Sales, located in Atlanta, Georgia. The business sells various retail merchandise. The business sells to both retail and wholesale customers, so on any given day they have customers who just walk in off the street as well as buyers purchasing merchandise for numerous stores. They want to be involved in Internet sales as well now, so their network will need to have Internet connectivity. They also want to have their own corporate e-mail server.
Their facility in Atlanta, Georgia is a 2-story building with a full basement that will use the first floor for retail and the second floor for management and other non-retail staff such as a call center for personnel receiving calls from Internet and catalog customers. The basement will be for warehousing inventory. They really don’t have a dedicated server room just yet, only an area in the basement where their current phone system and small Internet connection comes into the building, the “Demarc” is behind the stairs. There are stairs connecting each of the 3 floors on the west side of the building. Retail parking is in the front, while staff parking is in the back, thereby allowing each to