network LAN design help!!
i am just about finnished getting my ccna and we have a tcs ( threaded case study) and basicly i have to design a lan for 11 schools from the gound up , and tie them together
now i was wondering actually thinkin of going mainframe for security reasons and the overall save in labor and cost associated with standard workstations over terminals
basicly i am in need of ideas pro and con tward mainframe teminal commputing and lan and network set up
i was thinkin of usin a 10 gig foundry ( web page accelerator) and a thin client and maybe 3 com audry
also i was leaning twards linux se or openBSD to ease the cost of licencing depending on the terms this will help make my proposal more appealing :-D
dunno i figure maybe i can get a few tips and a lil support all ideas and veiws welcome thanks
ok here are the specs i have gathered
i made a per say 5 mill alloted for the budget for the network it isnt to big especially for 11 schools and i dont realy know what they have to spend so i deemed 5 mill a fair price but we will see what can be done
at the data center i will be lookin to get a connection. For a base line i have decided to have enough bandwidth for the worst case scenario of each studunt to have at the same time running 4 video streams of 320x200 video x 15 fps x 20k students x 50% growth i know this is extreme but this is the kind of robustness i deem nessesary for a real life test i came up with a bandwidth of 38.4 GIGABytes seems i may have went a lil overboard but we will see this is a brainstorm with further input i may be able to come to a compromise lol or be forced to. lol im goin for a 16 blade server with NAS storage multiplexing at each school site so that is 11 schools.
plus have 5 or 6 blade servers at the data center. I also think i should have RAIC implemented for data integrity. As far as an os for the server i would like to implement Linux SE mainly over open BSD because of the support. also i will try to push for mainly html and java based apps for the thinness of the aps because ill be runnin a thin client such as either 3comm audery or a more expensive Sun Ray thin client.
at the data center im looking at a 10 Gig internal switch such as foundry or comparable
and dual FDDI ring for redundancy this posses the question of say a terroristic disaster takes place and takes out the data center with RAIC i have a way of restoring data but i need to have a redundant path for internet connection. was lookin toward satilite or maybe microwave
dunno yet im just commin up with a rough draft
also for security i will have a firewall that can be configured specificaly for each school at each site and a main firewall at the data center
because say napster comes out with a client that uses pop3 and or http and telnet or somethin each site will need to have a way to policy their access on a school specific
scale i dont want the robustness of my network eaten by the data center firewall
hehe
also i will need to have a networked printer in each room i did have the idea of just having a shared printer or 2 on each floor but the fact teachers will have to leave classes unattended isnt in the best interest .