OSI Network
For this network design assignment, you are free to come up with a fictional mid sized company engaged in a dot-com business for which you will select the business focus. The company can be a service-oriented or information-provider enterprise. You should note that the company is a start-up and sells no physical products but the company is positioned to manage any type of e-commerce operation online and through its office-based and mobile workforce.
Assume that you are a telecommunications professional hired by this company to design its telecommunications network, serving all management and operations activities. The company has its offices in five different cities across the United States, with its main office in a major city. The company has around 250 employees, which include executives, managers, support staff, salespeople, and technical staff. As the company is new, the size of the client base is small but the company is expected to grow steadily in the foreseeable future. All clients are corporate clients.
Each office has a general manager, office and department managers, and support staff. All executives as well as the technical staff are located in the main office and all the salespeople are mobile. The telecommunications system must support interoffice communications across all locations and with the mobile salespeople. The executives must be able to communicate securely with the general managers, and the general managers must be able to communicate with the office and department managers on a regular basis to get both voice and data information about clients.
In addition, the salespeople must be able to communicate with clients and the main office via voice, e-mail, and two-way videoconferencing. The clients must be able to communicate directly with the general managers and executives in the same way. All communications must be kept secure and then archived as part of the organizational knowledge base of the company that will be used to support decisions across the current enterprise and as the company grows and expands to more locations.
You need to prepare a comprehensive network design proposal for the company. The network design proposal should address all the perceived telecommunications requirements. In addition, the network design should also address any additional telecommunications requirements that you may identify in the process of describing your chosen company and explaining its business and operations. You are required to prepare a formal proposal and a customer-briefing presentation
In this part of W2 Assignment 2, you will examine the role of the OSI model in network design.
The OSI model is not a network architecture, and it does not constitute network specifications. The OSI model serves as a guideline for network design and helps in representing how a network functions.
Continuing with the course project you started in Week 1, on the basis of your research and reading in this week, complete the following tasks:
- Map the layers of the OSI model to the actual processes required for your scenario as identified in W1 Assignment 3. Use the OSI model as your network design reference.
- Based on the updates to your network design, update the vendor and costs table that you created in W1 Assignment 3.
- Finally, add a network process diagram to your proposal.
Note: You may want to try a different drawing tool for that purpose. Click here to try one such tool.
Compile your answers to both parts of this assignment in a 4- to 5-page Microsoft Word document.