Introduction
The key to success in any network implementation is proper planning. To ensure Newton Ad Agency has a suitable set up, a consultation report will be created that details a WAN setup for the company. The report will capture all requests made by the Newton Advertising Agency. While the report may not be the best or optimal setup, it will cover all requests and budget friendly.
WAN Connectivity
After initial hardware and setup costs, the general funding should be under $1,100 per month for the internet on all sites. The Consulting Firm should only utilize $1,075 per month for backing up data in the head office. Austin Headquarters needs a fast WAN connectivity through backup WAN connectivity giving 99 percent uptime. Two companies; local cable company, and the T1 line will be the internet service providers (ISP). Utilization of these companies will enable backup connection in Austin.
IP Assignments
In the networking field, as far as IP assignment is concerned, there are two methods of assigning IP addresses to clients in the network. The Newton Ad agency may apply any of them. Dynamic IP addressing helps the clients in a network obtain IP addresses dynamically whenever they are connected to the network. When the site goes offline, an IP address is assigned to another location in the same network, and when it comes online, it is assigned another IP address. This method is easier especially when there are many locations in the network in which the network administrator need not assign IPs to clients whenever they connect to the network. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is the one used to specify the range of IP addresses in the network then it assigns to sites dynamically in a network (Vilhar, Novak, & Kandus, 2010).
In Static IP addressing, the network administrator assigns IP addresses to sites whenever they connect to the network. The IP address assigned to a given site will not be assigned to another one since it will result in conflict in IPs. This method is tiresome and can only be applied when there is a small number of sites to connect to the network (Ding & Du, 2011).
Subnet Masking
We will use IPv4-VLSM to assign IP address to all computers three different locations. Three locations need to be supplied with the network. Therefore, there should be three subnet masks. The range 192.168.100.0–192.168.103.255 lies in class C. The default subnet masks for Class C given as 255.255.255.0/24. 24 represents the number of bits that are turned on (number of ones). Converting this to binary notation, we get 111111111 11111111 11111111 00000000. Using the host formula (2n-2), where n is the number of zeros, we can get the number of hosts that can be allowed in the subnet mask. In this case, we get 254. This subnet mask can be used for Rural Satellite and NY branches where the number of users is 200. For the main branch, where a number of users are 500, we can allocate /23 subnet mask or (255.255.254.0/23). This is a custom subnet mask which in binary notation can be written as 11111111 11111111 11111110 0000000. We have nine zeros in this subnet mask. Applying the host formula 2n-2, we get 29-2) which give us 512 minus 2, or simply 510. Therefore, with this subnet mask, we can have 510 hosts which suit our head office.
The chart below shows a summary of all IP subnets.
Subnet Name
Needed Size
Allocated Size
Subnet Mask
Assignable Range
Austin
500
510
255.255.254.0/23
192.168.100.1 – 192.168.101.254
NY
200
254
255.255.255.0/24
192.168.102.1 – 192.168.102.254
Rural Satellite
200
254
255.255.255.0/24
192.168.103.1 – 192.168.10..254
By use of VLSM, the network administrator will subnet the IO subnet in a manner that list IP addresses are unused. As seen in this case, there are many IP addresses left after assigning IPs to locations in the network.
WAN Technology
As mentioned earlier, Newton Ad Agency is a start-up with three locations; two offices located in Austin, (headquarters rural satellite office) as well as one office in New York. To connect all three offices, a WAN configuration must be created. The network requires a fast connectivity to support large files for all workstations and remote users. To complete this task, a recommendation for WAN technology will be proposed along with a picture diagram to visualize the overall WAN connectivity.
Virtual Private Network (VPN) will be used to provide a connection to the three sites. There are three sites that need to be connected; head office, rural satellite, and NY. At least two routers, two gateways, and two or more Ethernet switches will be needed. All these will be connected through a full mesh Wide Area Network (WAN) connection to the head office. The connection will be done using both Internet and WAN connectivity. This will enable sharing of data/information on all sites as well as VoIP and video data (Moreno & Reddy, 2012). This type of connection supports both wireless and wired Local Area Network (LAN) connectivity.
A suitable implementation would be to use one or more Ethernet Switches. It offers a server zone, guest access zone, load sharing, identity-based access control and optimized VoIP because the key requirements of the branch offices need high availability, high speed, high performance, services-ready, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and WAN optimization. A standard router provides both the routing and embedded VoIP gateway functionality. Furthermore, these devices provide firewall, VPN, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) functionality. The Ethernet switches provide assured LAN connectivity and are deployed in a redundant configuration for highest availability purposes (Wong & Zhu, 2014). Dual 24-port or 48-port stackable switches can be deployed initially.
In branches, one device is connected to the Internet either over DSL modem
and the second device is connected via a private link, thus offering redundant connectivity and
Redundant devices. Connections from branch to headquarters will be provide through private
and leased lines. Over this connection enterprises typically need to have two IPSec tunnels
that will permanently connect to the two different branch office locations. The primary
connection to the Internet is over the broadband Internet link. Without backhauling the traffic to
headquarters, this connection, uses a split tunneling mode to separate the traffic that goes out to
corporate resources from traffic going out to the Internet.
To ensure secure connectivity, two IPSec tunnels are recommended, each for different branch locations (Ppskom, 2012). VPN monitoring traffic provides the primary point-to-point connection to the data center/headquarters. All traffic to the Internet is sent directly over the broadband link.
Explanation
This outline provides the highest level of availability by using device and link redundancy, without both being dependent on one another. The routers and firewalls connected between in full mesh with unique IP address connectivity. Each firewall connects to both routers without a shared IP Address, providing redundancy through dynamic routing protocol. The devices connect to a shared LAN (broadcast domain) using the given IP address. The device connected to the router that has the point-to-point link to the data center/headquarters holds the IP Address.
The second router acts as the backup device and assumes the IP address in case the primary device fails on the LAN side. In addition, the devices synchronize sessions amongst themselves, such that a device failure does not force a session failure. The LAN switches are implemented with at least two redundant full switches in active configuration (Soprovich et al., 2014). Further, enabling DoS protection on routers through stateless packet filtering helps to prevent the devices from receiving more user control traffic than it can handle, thus providing a higher level of availability.
The diagram below shows connectivity for WAN technologies chosen for each site