After carefully interviewing the Stake holders of the Leonard Cooper Charter School, several issues were observed. The first noticeable concern was the print server. Their management of print jobs on the print server are called into question because of the many collisions on the print server. They are presently using a half-duplex system for their print jobs. A half-duplex system provides signal communication in both directions, however only one direction at a time. A good example of this technology might be two-way radios. The person listening must wait until the transmitter concludes the signal transmission before responding to the call otherwise a collision will occur and the entire message won't get received. In a half-duplex Ethernet network, a collision is the result of two devices on the same Ethernet network attempting to transmit data simultaneously. In the event of a network "collision", both transmitted packets are discarded. Collisions are a normal occurrence on Ethernets. To remedy this problem, an Ethernet standard was put into place called, "Carrier Sense Multiple Access/ Collision Detect (CSMA/CD)" This allows network devices to "take turns" using the signal carrier line. When a device wants to transmit, it checks the signal level of the line to determine whether someone else is already using it. If it is already in use, the device waits and retries, perhaps in a few seconds. If it isn't in use, the device transmits. However, two devices can transmit at the same time in which case a collision occurs and both devices detect it. Each device then waits a random amount of time and retries until successful in getting the transmission sent. (Bryant, 2011).
Another area of contention is the actual speed of the network. Leonard Cooper is not operating at the optimal speeds necessary to handle daily business. Based on Mr. Fischer's interview, they are currently working with a 10 megabit