Need some help with a scenario question:

Whaaaats Up

was wondering if someone can help me with this scenrio question i have tryed but am a little confuesed :

A magazine published based in seattle has 2 branch offices: 1 in vancouver, and one in toronto. Each office is internally and sepreratly networked. The networks were implemented years ago, and each has a coaxial linear bus topology supporting ethernet 10 Mbps traffic. The brach offfces stay in touch with each other by telephone and federal express. Recently, the company has begun to develop projects that involve team members from more than 1 office. Each office has resources that the other 2 do not; the current projects require all of these resources. The internal networks have had freqeust cable problems, each time they have a problem, the entire offcie network goes down until the problem is resolved.

The management team would like a network design that offers easier troubleshooting, less down time, and provides WAN communication between sites. They would like the WAN conenction to be able to suppport about 256 Kbps of data andseveral analog telephone conversations betweens sites (thre long distance bills have been un-acceptably high). The combination of long distance and federal-express charges should be eliminated by the WAN. Managment would liek the WAN to be able to continue operating even if one of the WAN links should fail.

a>Identify at least 2 network items in each brach-office network site that neeed up-grading

b>The seperate branch offices need to maintain voice and data communications with each other. Which type of WAN connection (link) might you use to connect the 3 sites to each other?

c> Which type of conenctivity device should be used to conenct the LAN to the multiple paths in the WAN.

These are my answers am i way off:

A>BUS TOPOLOGY,
B>ISDN
C>ROUTER

sounds like an exam questions :)

Well its a bonus question .... i wanna make sure i at least get this one right (i need the marks) :confused:

I wanna be able to explain it too why the answers are what they are , soo i dont really care if i get the answer just some help or even if my answers are close. Then i will understand it better. Cause what i got from quetsion "A" is they need somehting more reliable well i choose to pick a different topology.

what kind of subject is that??

Data Communications and Networks: CPSC 2480

Its like pre-reqs for what i wanna take later Computer Science. Casue my Dads owns a little shop and i want to get some certs and stuff.

I think that (real world) isdn is not the correct answer. I should know as I set up one of our offices with isdn internet access on a temporary basis within the last year, and it sucked. They had moved into a brand new building which did not have all the nescessary copper/fiber laid when we moved in...... so, having said that.....

As far as I know, the basic isdn service is 128 kbps. Which is less than half of your data requirement, not even including voice....
Also, the typical isdn line is a per month fee for the line itself, plus an additional fee for each unit of data passed over it, plus any fees from your ISP(altogether, really expensive low speed internet access, a full T1 is much faster, and almost the same cost, assuming 24/7 connection over the isdn line).

for the nescessary bandwidth, you would definitely want a fractional T1 at both locations with some type of hardware VPN. If you dont want to go with T1 type connections, you could get that type of speed via some of the better business DSL connections which offer 386 and higher upload and download connections......

K Koool...
T1 or DSL connection i should pick from

And the upgrade and making it more reiable does that mean
swtiching to maybe star topology or somehting?

Set up a frame relay cloud between all offices, Rip out the PBX and go VOIP.

A star topology is definitely more reliable. It wouldn't hurt to upgrade that silly coax to CAT-5 either. Coax is going the way of the dinosaurs - not totally gone yet unfortunately, but definitely on its way out.