Network related Assignment/Homework

Hi to all,

I would like to pose a little problem for you network techies. I have an assignment that basically is posing this problem:
Assume you have a system with the following needs:
(i) connection of a hundred PC's in various offices on 3 floors;
(ii) connection of two general-purpose labs;
(iii) connection of a special IC design network
(iv) the provision of email to around five hundred users.
Each office PC must be on a network and accessible from other PC's. All of them have access to Internet. The general-purpose labs must allow for local student classwork, but must also allow the students to connect to the Internet and to access e-mail accounts. The IC design lab requires very high speed interaction between the four workstations used.

HINTS given - Look at technical aspects of IP such as addresses, fixed address, DHCP, virtual (non real) addresses, server types (gateway, system, mail etc), routers, switches, memory requirements, cabling, LAN subdivision etc.

The following are my ideas for a draft. There are basically 3 networks: Office, Labs, IC design. I thought of using subnetting to separate them, say; 192.168.2.0-255.255.255.128 (127 pc's max.), 192.168.2.128-255.255.255.192 (63 pc's max.) and 192.168.2.192-255.255.255.200 (7 pc's max.) respectively.
I thought of using a 1Gbit switch for every office floor and a 1Gbit switch in each lab including the IC design lab. Every Gbit switch will connect to a router. All pc's will have a 100Mbit NIC except the IC design pc's which will have Giga bit LAN cards.
Connection to the Server/Mail server is via a Gbit connection thus making the "backbone" faster than the networks.

 

One comment I would make is that you are making life hard for yourself by working in the 192.168.0.0 IP space. Use 10.0.0.0. That gives you a lot more freedom in IP addressing, and you can split networks at the octet level, rather than having to do complicated subnetting.

For example, if you use a 255.255.0.0 subnet mask, you can use the second octet to create seperate broadcast domains. 10.1.0.0/255.255.0.0, 10.2.0.0/255.255.0.0, 10.3.0.0/255.255.0.0. You can use the third octet to provide a symbolic seperation of different types of nodes. Perhaps on the 10.2.0.0 domain you might want to use a different address space for servers, than end users. So you could make all servers use 10.2.1.0 addresses and all users on 10.2.100.0 address. If you have more that 254 users, use the next third octet - 10.2.101.0. They will all be on the same network, but their IP addresses will give a key as to the node type just from the address.

192.168.0.0 namespace is a throw back to 10-20 years ago when network devices assumed the subnet mask based on the address. With modern network equipment, there is no need to tie yourself to the groups of 254 nodes that the 192.168.0.0 space provides.

Use the 10.0.0.0 space. It makes the life of a network designer much simpler.

 

Thanks for the tip, Reggie.

Will follow your advice as its simpler and also looks better!

Thanks again

 

On the physical level. Connect floors by fiber links with Gbic cards in your switches.
DCs and Exchange boxes wouldn't hurt to have fiber segments also.

 

Excellent advice. If you want to understand why this is such good advice, I'd recommend you have a look at Que's Practical Network Cabling book.

 

Thanks both of you. I'm afraid that you lost me Scott!! Can I bother you into giving a very light explanation of DC and Exchange boxes?

 

Oh sorry,

Domain Controllers and Exchange servers have a tremendious amount of traffic on a large network. It's a common practace to use gigibit or faster fiber connections from the computer to the switch on these machines.

 

Thanks for the info. Will try to incorporate all the data gleamed from you guys.