Lan Proposal Essay, Research Paper

Barrett & Barrett Advertising NJ is the newly established satellite office of Barrett & Barrett Advertising CA. Due to their increasing number of East Coast clientele, they have opened a satellite office to accommodate that business. B & B Advertising currently employs 56 people, 5 of which will transfer to the NJ office upon final renovations. Although a small outfit by number, gross sales for fiscal year 1998 exceeded $18,000,000.00.

B & B CA?s current computer usage is significantly high. Their need for efficient graphic capability requires them to maintain state of the art software and hardware. However B & B has stressed that user friendliness is a higher priority. B & B NJ poses the need for a small-scale local area network, to be tied into its parent company in California. The California office already has a LAN in place and operational. Their principal need for the LAN in NJ will be to transfer ad proposals to the California office and back via electronic mail.

As requested by B & B, new equipment will be purchased for the NJ satellite office. In the probable event that B & B?s clientele increases, all equipment will be relocated and reused, with minimal loss (i.e. cabling costs).

Located on the third floor of 1113 Industry Way, its architecture presented ease for a networking situation. The office space is one floor with the dimensions of the 28 feet in width and 50 feet in length. The suite is divided into four offices (12 feet 6 inches by 15 feet 6 inches), a conference room (15 feet by 10 feet 6 inches), a LAN room (12 feet 6 inches), and a common area. All of these sub-divisions contain drop ceilings 12 feet high, which will create ease of laying network cables, as phone lines have already been laid during renovations. The floor plan attached will ease in understanding dimensions and phone/drop placement.

The first step of implementing the network involves running 2 drops to each of the offices and LAN room and 1 to the conference room. The hub will be located in a small room dedicated to LAN equipment. This room was designed in that location for centrality as well as keeping the aesthetics of the suite, which was of particular concern for B & B. The entire suite will be cabled with category 5 twisted pair wire. Wall faceplates to include both drops and a phone jack will be installed in each room. As can be expected, the physical cost to install these 11 drops is minimal, the labor is the majority of this expense:

Office # # of Drops $ Horizontal Run $ Vertical Run $ Total

1 2 29.77 24.64 22.41

2 2 38.23 24.64 62.87

3 2 30.67 24.64 55.31

4 2 38.59 24.64 63.23

LAN Rm. 2 27.43 0.00 27.43

Conf. Rm. 1 30.85 24.64 55.49

*Labor 11 24 hr $79/hr 1896.00

Total cost of running drops 2182.74

Fast Ethernet was the protocol of choice. The California office currently uses standard Ethernet, but is upgrading to Fast Ethernet and requested we do the same to make employee transition as simple as possible. Fast Ethernet runs at speeds of 100 Mbps. The wiring is a higher quality than the Category 3 normally used by Ethernet, therefore is a bit more expensive, but a worthy advantage.

Fast Ethernet defines a star topology. There are many advantages in designing a LAN based on a star topology. It allows expansion to the existing LAN without effort or disruption. Troubleshooting, repair, and maintenance can be accomplished to a failed node without holding up or disrupting work on other nodes.

Hardware plays an important role in reliability of a network. Each workstation is to be custom ordered from Dell. Each office will house a Dell computer with the following options:

400 MHz Pentium II Processor

128 MB RAM

10.6GB Hard Drive

3 COM 10/100 Combo Card

DVD-ROM

8 MB Video Card

17? Monitor

Internal Zip Drive

In addition each office will have its own Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4000N due to heavy printing volume. The conference room will house a laptop for presentations. A laptop was chosen for this room because employees to do work at home will utilize it. The Dell Laptop will have the following options:

366 MHz Pentium II Processor

128 MB RAM

6.4GB Hard Drive

3 COM 10/100 PC Card

56K Voice/Fax Modem

DVD-ROM

8MB Video Card

External Zip Drive

VGA TV Adapter

The LAN room will house a color laser printer to be utilized by all employees. The need assessment suggests that the Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet 8500N would satisfy the requirements of B & B. The network equipment will be housed in the LAN room indicated on the floor plan. That equipment will consist of a Dell Power Edge 1300 Server with modem and router with the following options:

450 MHz Pentium II Processor

512K internal L2 Cache

512MB ECC 100MHz SDRAM

3 COM 3C980 10/100 PCI Adapter

3 COM 56K Modem

36GB Hard Drive

3.5? Floppy Drive

DVD-ROM

Internal Zip Drive

The hard drive in the server will be partitioned into a public working drive and a back up drive. The last item to be installed in the LAN room will be the hub. A Netgear 16 port auto 10/100 Mbs switched hub is the choice. This 16 port hub will allow for expansion should the need arise to put another node(s) on the network. In the event that expansion grows beyond the 16 port hub, a smaller hub may be added for minimal cost and effort.

Qty Hardware Nomenclature Unit Price Total Price

4 Dell Desktops Workstations 2189.90 8759.60

4 HP LaserJet 4000N 1399.89 5599.56

1 Dell Laptop 1905.95 1905.95

1 HP Color LaserJet 8500N 6359.95 6359.95

1 Dell Power Edge 1300 Server 3199.99 3199.99

1 Netgear Switched Hub 929.99 929.99

Total cost of hardware 26,755.04

Windows NT is the operating system of choice. Its cost is figured into the desktop workstations, as each comes with a user license. Administrative needs call for Microsoft Office 2000 Premium Edition consisting of Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook, and Access. Graphic needs call for a number of different programs. The chosen software is described in the following. Adobe GraphicStudio is a package that contains Photoshop for print work, Illustrator 5.0 for detailed artwork to print, and PageMaker for business documents. Bryce 4 was chosen for it 3D graphic capability. Paint Shop Pro 5 was chosen for it?s graphic editing quality. And lastly, Norton Anti-Virus for updated virus protection. Software estimates are as follows:

Qty Software Nomenclature Unit Price Total Price

5 Microsoft Office 2000 649.95 3249.75

5 Adobe GraphicsStudio 949.00 3796.00

5 Bryce 4 199.95 799.80

5 Paint Shop Pro 79.95 319.80

Total cost of software 8165.35

The network overall will cost approximately $37,000.00. This figure is based on new state of the art equipment and software. Every item has been carefully examined to ensure it offers the most for the needs of Barrett & Barrett. Cost may be cut if the need arises, however, efficiency and technology will be sacrificed. All in all, this network has been developed with the sole purpose of satisfying the clients needs within realistic constraints.