Deliverable length: 400-600 words Review draft report and provide meaningful feedback. Refrain from generic
feedback, such as simply stating “good job.” Your feedback to other
students will be most helpful if you not only point out weak areas but also offer
suggestions for improvement. The best feedback takes a 3-stage approach to
identify the following: What was done well, Weaknesses and Areas for
improvement.My Rational please see attached for IP3, looking forward to constructive
criticism. Essentially a retail store in the Midwest with 3 stores
looking to expand into 3 more stores. They need to fix what is broke, square up
the network, set a proper template for future stores, and hit the goals set by
the owner. Please let me know about read-ability and any areas for
improvement. Thanks.
mb_it640_ip3.docx
individual_projects.docx
Unformatted Attachment Preview
2019
Networking & Telecommunications
IT640-1901B-01
DIAGNOSTIC CHILDRENS HEALTHCARE
MIKE BRADY
02/27/19
Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
Table of Contents
Network Architecture (Week 1)………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
Company Description …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
Goals & Success Factors ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
Infrastructure ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4
Current State ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4
Broken State ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Future State ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 5
Network Reference Model Comparison (Week 2) ………………………………………………………………. 7
OSI and TCP/IP References ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Reference Models ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10
Current Model………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
Proposed Model ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 11
Network Design Diagram (Week 3) ………………………………………………………………………………… 12
Current Network ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 12
Analysis …………………………………………………………………………..Error! Bookmark not defined.
Proposed Network ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 15
Telecommunications Plan (Week 4) ………………………………………………………………………………… 17
Remote Network Implementation Plan (Week 5) ………………………………………………………………. 17
References ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 18
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Network Architecture (Week 1)
Company Description
The American Trading Post (ATP) is a medium-sized all-in-one general store that sells a
variety food, beverages, clothes, home knick-knacks, automotive, over the counter meds along
with an assortment American heritage items that are the theme around the store(s). The company
currently has three store locations, two in Michigan, one in Ohio and within proximity to each
other and the Michigan-Ohio border. There are roughly 50 staff members employed at the
company that ranges from cashiers, stock-warehousing, accounting, IT, leadership, marketingsales, and various other roles. The company has been around for four years now establishing
themselves as a better brand of a general store with higher quality food-items; with a focus on
maintaining a clean and safe store for all customers. In those years the company grew, learned
more about the customer base, established capital and is now poised for expansion. The
franchise owner and founder, Mr. Davis is looking to double down and open three new locations
across the Lake Eric into Pennsylvania. There has been a strong presence of customer loyalty, in
where the patron is willing to pay a more for a better quality item and overall store experience.
Strategic analysis done shows great potential in the mid-west market and now is the time for
expansion.
Total functionality of operations from purchasing, inventory, asset management,
employee engagement onto most business workflows is smooth throughout the company. There
is a glaring issue preset which the owner, CFO, CEO, and managers all agree on needs to be
addressed. Each store operation runs well, but they are running in isolation from each other, in
that, there is no cross-communication or unified platform, in a sense they are silos to each other.
This has sustained for some time now and has worn on the external departments that keep books,
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inventory, and data consistency. American Trading Post is a company that focused more on the
goods and services to the customer while solidifying a brand and market niche. Leadership now
wants to bring store technology up to speed in various areas to be competitive and begin to tie in
all current and new sites into one enterprise system architecture. If ATP wants to expand and
continue its success, it will need to umbrella the stores, secure systems, set standards, and
position themselves for growth. Corporate leadership is behind this mission statement. Even
though each store has decent infrastructure that provides well for the site but systems, databases,
security, inventory, etc. The data is scattered through various apps, servers, and networks.
Goals & Success Factors
The owner, Mr. Davis sat down with key staff members and a consultant group to
determine the scope, goals, and factors for success for unifying the store’s networks. Seen below
for the high-level overview carved out by this group:
Objective / Goal
Establish a unified
network between all
stores.
Centralized Applications
& Systems
Build out three new
stores
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Measure Indicator
Quantitative = physical
equipment, infrastructure,
switches, cabling.
Qualitative = fluid connectivity
from any store; phones, registers,
domain, communications
Quantitative = Servers builds the
business standard for
applications, and creation of an
ECM or repository.
Qualitative = Staff satisfaction,
accuracy, and efficiently.
Quantitative = The building or
purchasing of new locations
Qualitative = staff & investor
feedback and confidence.
Source
Datacenter, LAN, WAN,
Cloud, Active Directory.
Databases, file shares,
SAN/NAS, vendor
applications.
Capital funds from the last
four years of growth.
Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
Maintain Quality &
Branding
Increase Net Income by
5%
Quantitative = Store standards,
uniforms, themes & visuals, logo,
quality of products.
Qualitative = survey, polls,
advertising, Staff/Customer usage
of systems and perceived quality
of life
Quantitative = Accounting dept.,
operating costs, simply net
earnings minus the cost of goods.
Marketing, sales, and image
research, product &
service.
Assets, Inventory, Sales,
integrated systems & apps.
Infrastructure
The following areas call out the American Trading Post stores and provide an analysis as to how
the project aims to fulfill the mission statement. It will review what the current network supports
along with the stated business goals and objectives. Also touching on each of the networking
problems that each of the store managers has concern for.
Current State
As previously stated there are three store locations: the founders’ site, store number two is
located in Michigan, and store number 3 in Ohio. The original store #1 has plenty of space and
would be perceived to be the model store for other branch locations although some of its
technologies for examples phones, kiosk, registers are due for an update. This location brings in
a lot of revenue, constant foot traffic, has a huge and growing customer base with a moderate
technology footprint. Store #2 is in a prime location for customers, shares plaza space with other
businesses, and is relatively smaller compared to the rest. It varies from low to high on systems
technology it can use given location and hardware onsite. Store #3 is a moderately spaced
facility built in the last ten years where ATP is recently bought after the lease was up a year ago.
Since then new hardware, appliances, and infrastructure have been put in place.
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Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
Broken State
ATP’s founder’s site (store #1) is estimated needing to bring almost 50% of the hardware up to
date to be stable. Requests to look into upgrading telecommunications which are outdated,
address bad overhead paging, along with most registers which fall out of contract next year.
There are security system & camera gaps that shift managers have mentioned. Store #2 has been
having issues with the shared business lines for internet and telecommunications, as well, face
limitations on space, mounting, power, and even cooling for most any device. Lastly, Store #3
has good technologic posture for the network, system, app, telecom, and the like. Managers find
what’s broken is compliance, sloppy work, and no foresight for monitoring, security, or any form
of pro-activeness. What’s broke is staff training/encouragement and capitalizing on all features,
licensing, functions each system or service provided. This site should be a model for next-gen
firewalls, cloud, and various other new equipment put in place.
Future State
The ATP founders site is an ideal location to establish a main data center and center for SDWAN connections given space. In a typical SD-WAN scenario, branch store broadband would
connect directly to the public Internet. However, in today’s world “with heightened security and
compliance responsibilities, traffic from the branches is backhauled over an encrypted VPN to
internal gateways, where a third-party security services provider monitors all traffic and enforces
security policies.” (Network World, 2018). This company will need to look hard at cloud
solutions for apps, software as a service, portal hosting, and even outsourcing the datacenter.
There is a plethora of solutions that fit any business for any budget nowadays. Store #2 the
shared business lines for internet and telecommunications will need to be addressed and new
answers sought out. Space being at a premium alternative like Citrix portals or client VPNs can
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Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
allow some staff to work offsite. Leading to cost or space savings “Once an organization
decides to support work from home, there is an opportunity to reduce costs for the following:
rental space or purchase of office buildings, desks, and furniture, desktop computers and
monitors, telecommunication routers and connections” (M.U.S.E 2019). Another consideration
moving forward is that many patrons have been asking about guest wireless in and just outside
the store; even ATP staff could benefit from this if setup correctly. Store #3 should be seized as
a model location and possibly looked at for trail of new hardware, products, and even software.
The good news for the future state of things is the owner, and varied staff sees the necessity for
investment and monies for this can be allocated. The CFO and accounting have a more
conservative mindset and are researching different models for cost and methods for payment.
Discussions overpaying in full, leasing, or how long to keep/depreciate IT assets are becoming
more frequent. New technology is not cheap to nor is the configuration and staff to manage it,
but there is true ROI baked in and allows the business to stay competitive.
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Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
Network Reference Model Comparison (Week 2)
It has come to the attend of leadership that there is no consistent or reliable documentation
throughout the locations. Though staff is equipped to explain the functions, workflow, and all
the steps involved for each of the keys areas of business. It’s important to take note the company
is running in a dual-stack environment but is feeling the effects of memory usage to the avail of
application impacts.
OSI and TCP/IP References
Given the factors mentioned and to get grounded on tasks of ahead of the business a reference
model was created for devices, applications, hardware, and software currently (fig.1) and a
revised (fig.2).
Fig.1
TCP/IP
Application
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TCP/IP & OSI Model in Relation to ATP
Layers
OSI Model
Protcols
Devices & Application
Application (7) Serves as the window
for users and
application processes
to access the network
DNS, DHCP,
FTP,
HTTPS,IMAP,
LDAP, NTP,
POP3, RTP,
RTSP, SSH,
SIP, SMTP,
SNMP, Telnet,
TFTP
End User Layer – Program that opens what
was sent or creates what is to be sent.
Register – Staff is interacting with screen,
entries, menus, selections.
Credit Card – Customer entering card and
information.
Stock & Inventory – Staff entry from various
mediums.
Security – User interface to application or
devices.
Business Apps – User interfaces to
application(s) or file(s).
Syntax Layer – encryption & decryption
Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
Transport
Internet
Link
8
Presentation (6) Formats the data to be
present to the
application layer. It
can be viewed as the
“translator” for the
network.
JPEG, MIDI,
MPEG, PICT,
TIFF
Session (5) – Allows
session establishment
between processes
running on different
stations.
NetBIOS,
NFS, PAP,
SCP, SQL,
ZIP
Transport (4) Ensures that messages
are delivered errorfree, in sequence, and
with no losses or
duplications.
TCP, UDP
Network (3) Controls the
operations of the
subnet, deciding
which physical path
the data takes.
ICMP, IGMP,
IPsec, IPv4,
IPv6, IPX, RIP
Data Link (2) Provides error-free
transfer of data frames
from one node to
another over the
physical layer.
ARP, ATM,
CDP, FDDI,
Frame Relay,
HDLC, MPLS,
PPP, STP,
Token Ring
Register – Translation of data input.
Credit Card – Encryption and PCI
compliance.
Stock & Inventory – Converts data entries.
Security – Encryption and translation of
commands.
Business Apps – Format and presentation of
data.
Sync and send to ports – Session
establishment.
Register – Communications session created
application(s).
Credit Card – Secure session established
Stock & Inventory – session created with
stock servers.
Security – Secure connection creation
Business Apps – Sync and sending to
business servers or ports.
TCP – Host to Host, flow control, message
segmentation
Register – Data are moving across
network(s).
Credit Card – Secure flow of messages, free
of error.
Stock & Inventory – Transferring data.
Security – TCP secure traffic transport.
Business Apps – data/packet delivery.
Packets – IP address, routing, subnet, frame
traffic controls
Register – Direction and pathing to the
application(s).
Credit Card – Proper PCI compliant pathing.
Stock & Inventory – Data movement across
subnet and VLAN to hosts.
Security – Proper segmented controls through
a security network.
Business Apps – Movement through business
vlan/network.
Frames- Contains MAC address, establishes
and terminates logical link between nodes
Register – Assured to destination without
issue.
Credit Card – protocol checking for errors.
Stock & Inventory – Checking transfer of
data.
Security – Verifying path(s).
Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
Physical (1) Concerned with the
transmission and
reception of the
unstructured raw bit
stream over the
physical medium.
Bluetooth,
Ethernet, DSL,
ISDN, 802.11
Wi-Fi
Business Apps – Node to node transfer
checking
Physical Structure- Cables, hubs, data
encoding,
Register – Physical end point of host, pc,
server, etc.
Credit Card – 3rd party secure destination.
Stock & Inventory – Inventory server(s).
Security – Camera, monitor, access point, or
server.
Business Apps – App, Server, PC, file share.
Fig.2
Layers
Revised Model for Operations
Devices & Application
Application (7) – Serves as the
window for users and
application processes to access
the network
End User Layer – Program that opens what was sent or creates
what is to be sent.
Register – Assure a business standard for the model and/or
update models of these devices running a consistent version
throughout all stores.
Credit Card – Compliant updated readers, updated firmware, set
standard for swipe, tap, and chip.
Stock & Inventory – Update software.
Security – Users training.
Business Apps – Allowances for site communication or cloud
with updates for servers/applications were needed.
Syntax Layer – encryption & decryption
Presentation (6) – Formats the
data to be present to the
application layer. It can be
viewed as the “translator” for the
network.
Session (5) – Allows session
establishment between processes
running on different stations.
Transport (4) – Ensures that
messages are delivered errorfree, in sequence, and with no
losses or duplications.
9
Register – Assure new or updated code.
Credit Card – Encryption and PCI compliance.
Stock & Inventory – Updated code software versioning.
Security – Encryption and translation of commands.
Business Apps – System/application updates were needed.
Sync and send to ports – Session establishment.
Register – no change.
Credit Card – Network segmentation.
Stock & Inventory – no change.
Security – Network segmentation.
Business Apps – Further review path.
TCP – Host to Host, flow control, message segmentation
Register – Ensure TCP network standards
Credit Card – Secure guidelines are followed
Stock & Inventory – Ensure TCP network standards
Networking & Telecommunications IT640-1901B-01
Network (3) – Controls the
operations of the subnet,
deciding which physical path the
data takes.
Data Link (2) – Provides errorfree transfer of data frames from
one node to another over the
physical layer.
Physical (1) – Concerned with
the transmission and reception
of the unstructured raw bit
stream over the physical
medium.
Security – Business security standards followed.
Business Apps – Ensure TCP network standards
Packets – IP address, routing, subnet, frame traffic controls
Register – Segmentation.
Credit Card – PCI Segmentation – Subnet – vlan – physical
Stock & Inventory – Segmentation.
Security – Segmentation.
Business Apps – Segmentation.
Frames- Contains MAC address, establishes and terminates
logical link between nodes
Register – no change.
Credit Card – re-validate PCI compliance checking.
Stock & Inventory – no change.
Security – review security pathing.
Business Apps – no change.
Physical Structure- Cables, hubs, data encoding,
Register – Assure proper networking connections and
terminations.
Credit Card – 3rd party usage (cellular, software, contactless)
Stock & Inventory – Inventory server hardware update.
Security – Access point and wiring updates.
Business Apps – Update servers, incorporate cloud.
Reference Models
ATP needs to review workflow models to extrapolate the changes required for the company to
move forward. With workflow mapping, the business can map out the steps for flows to better
understand, evaluate, and improve them. Having this roadmap helps the ATP have more insight
to business processes, identify redundancies, increase accountability, reduce micromanagement,
improve communication, provide better customer service, and better quality for the goods or
services (Tallyfy, 2018). Thus meeting key goals for an update infrastructure and establishing a
unified network between all stores.
Current Model
ATP current data workflow model in figure 3 below:
Fig.3
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Proposed Model
ATP proposed data workflow model in figure 4 below:
Fig.4
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Network Design Diagram (Week 3)
In this next section the organization will take a hard look at information gathered from staff on
the state of the network, devices, and traffic flows. Then contrast against a proposed model(s)
that intend to provide more reliability, redundancy, efficiency, and bet …
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