The LAN will form a central part of the school’s Information Technology strategy for the next five to seven years: Computer Networking Course Work, UOB, UK

Introduction

The LAN will form a central part of the school’s Information Technology strategy for the next five to seven years and will provide the framework for future LAN developments.

The proposed solution should cover all of the points mentioned in this document and will consist of diagrams and tables with short descriptions of key points.

General requirements and IT usage

Each member of staff in the school will be allocated a desktop machine running Windows 11. You are not required to provide hardware or software specifications for the workstations as this will be undertaken by another company.

The network should allow lecturers log in to the network with University provided laptops or mobile devices anytime and anywhere within the campus. Students will be allowed to use the wireless network to access publicly available content using their own laptops or other devices.

The school currently consists of staff offices and 6 computing laboratories, the layouts of which are shown in this document, the layouts are not to scale. Each member of staff and each student position will require a hardwired network connection point to attach a desktop workstation. The PC and patch cables will be provided by the University IT team once the network installation is complete.

A number of network-attached dedicated hardware servers will also be provided and installed by the University IT team after the network installation. These will provide directory services, DHCP, DNS, Email, intranet, print services, and database services. The software implementation of the servers and services is beyond the scope of the report. The network design must include a location and connection method for the servers.

The network should provide flexible connectivity options throughout the site for a wide range of end systems including printers, host computers, and fileservers. It should also be capable of supporting voice and video communications over the LAN. In addition to this flexibility, the LAN should be upgradeable to cater to more users, higher traffic loads, and developing technology. The LAN should be resilient, secure, and cost-effective.