VPN Components
Case Study
Company Overview
FractalApps is a software development start-up. It was founded by three friends who went to undergrad school together at the University of Maryland. They founded their startup recently and set up headquarters at the condo of the two founders in Washington, DC. They have focused their attention on mobile app development and have developed and successfully marketed a popular app for job seekers. Now they are expanding their company into a full-fledged software development house.
They have recently received a cash infusion from an angel investor in Silicon Valley and are ready to build out their business. Their plan is to have three locations: a small headquarters in DC where the founders and senior staff reside, a sales office based in NYC (Brooklyn), and a development house in San Francisco where the bulk of the developers live and work.
They are looking for you to develop a network design for their business. They are seeking a standardized LAN design (using consistent hardware/software) for the three offices, and a cost-effective WAN design that allows all of their staff to communicate and collaborate quickly, efficiently, without a lot of network delay. The network should support both their voice and data needs.
Further, they require a secure way for mobile workers to remote into the network and participate as if they were in the office. Many of the sales staff are in the field, as well as the development staff who want to be able to work practically anywhere. A VPN solution is what they are seeking but need guidance on what the hardware/software requirements are.
The Deliverable
Using this case study, you are to identify a minimum of five (5) requirements, analyze them, and offer a proposal that provides FractalApps with a converged network solution and explains how the components of the solution, and the solution as a whole, meet the identified requirements. The proposed solution must address each of the requirements identified. At least one network diagram must be incorporated to illustrate your proposed solution. You should do some research to address the cost issues and defend the proposed solution from a cost-benefit perspective. This is to be a general analysis of the benefits versus the cost of a converged network, not a full cost-benefit analysis with cost data.
Your plan and network diagram(s) includes three locations and how they interconnect: a small headquarters in DC where the founders and senior staff reside, a sales office based in NYC (Brooklyn), and a development house in San Francisco where the bulk of the developers live and work.
In your plan and diagram(s) you don’t need to specify the number of workers or workstations in each location, but you need to address the number of locations and type of network connections and support they need. The number of employees working at or through (remotely) for any location is not known and can be represented as a small office group in each location.
Note: At least one network diagram must be incorporated to illustrate your proposed solution in Project 3.
Please provide descriptive headings for each of the following four main topic criteria (not the items in the rubric). Designs should be constructed using fundamental network devices (devices, switches, routers, cables, servers, etc.) at each location. A design submitted that simply depicts a connection to and from a cloud-based a service provider will be graded as zero.
1. Identify five specific business requirements that relate to the design and implementation of the network.
2. Define the most appropriate cabling for the local area network(s); define the network components in the local area network and explain your reasoning for selecting each of these.
3. Define the wide area network infrastructure (technology); define the network components in the wide area network and explain your reasoning for selecting each of these.
4. Define the VPN components (hardware/software) for the organization. Explain what components go where, and what is required on the mobile devices. Justify your recommendation.