Case Projects

[devildell]

hay all,
i just bought a book i plan to use to help me study for my network+ cert. (i have a long way to go) on the CD that came with it has these 10 (in chap 5) case problems (these two are giving me trouble) i was wonding if you could give me a little input. i read through the chapter it talks about diffrent topoligies, and the diffrent backbones a network can have. serial, distributed, collapsed, or parallel. this chapter also goes over the IEEE standers

_____________________ your help will really be nice.

1. you have been asked to design a LAN for a very successful CPA firm with five departments in one building and a total of 560 employees, currently, the firm has no networked computers, and it is open to any suggestions you can offer. the firm does have a few requirements, however. it wants to make sure that it can easily expand its LAN in the future without exorbitant costs and without moving a lot of equipment. the firm also wants to make sure that every departmetn has very fast access to the LAN, and , of course, it wants the LAN to remain up at all times. it has already been decided to use the Net Ware 6.5 network OS. what kind of LAN would you design for this company?

2. Astro Tech Components, a company that manufactures parts for the aeronautics industry, is haveing trouble with a network segment in one of its departments. its IT director has asked you for help. the network consists of three hundred workstations using a mix of clients OSs and connecting to both UNIX and Windows server 2003 servers via Ethernet 10BaseT. the department experiencing problems is the CAD/CAM group, which had fought for months to get newer, more powerful workstations. now that the technicians finally installed the more powerful workstations, however, the users can't access the network. you ask what kind of network they are on, and the IT director says the this group was upgraded to 100BaseT, along with two other groups, just yesterday, because these users needed the extra speed. when you ask wheather all users are affected, she says that everyone-- even the departments vice president, who has full rights to the network--is prevented from logging on. you suspect that the CAD/Cam users' network access is the problem. what steps do you take next...

[Badfinger]

Well you have to make an ip address plan, that accomandates the stated number of users and a little more. Also think about redundant paths in your network, to make sure, if one node fails, the lan is still reachable, or funtioning. I would say there is no general answer here. I would just note all teh requirements, that try to find for every point an answer and than combine them to one idea.

Since I'm right now in the company, and haven't so much time, as the task requires, I would recommend you, to try to find some examples on the net. Also, if you have access to Cisco Websites and material, check it. I have passed the CCNA and such questions are covered in the course. But I have no idea about Net Ware.

If you are interested, I could discuss with you, your ideas to that particular question Wopuld be interesting, Iw ould say.

The second questions seems to aim on the basic user adding and changing. I mean, you have to think about creating new groups, new uiserids, passwords and such things. Here I would try to review all the aspects related to the topic. I have not really much experience with Windows 2003. But this question seems to be trying to ask you for a new user policy. The main problem I see, is that you have to make sure, that UNIX and Windows2003 support each other.

Anyway, teaching yourself all such things really helps to get better. It asumes much time and so on, but it's well worth!

Best regards,
badfinger

[devildell]

thanks, i think your ansers put me on track......