Local Area Networks at Huffman Trucking

The physical extend of the local area network is 15 buildings. This is the number of buildings to be covered with the local area network. The network supports 4000 users with each user being connected to the network. The number of nodes and workstation types required in the network differ. The number of nodes will dependent on the number of host bits in a subnet mask. For example, if the network requires 64 nodes then the number of hosts will be used to calculate the subnet mask of the network. In this case the subnet mask contains six “o” bits. This gives a subnet mask of 11111111.11111111.11111111.11000000.The work station type is Pentium.

The work station should have around 2000 computers. Desktop computers which range from 400 MHz Celerons to 3+GHz P4s.  Laptop computers that range from 800 MHz PIII to 2.16 GHz Pentium M can be used. The number of servers required is 35 servers. The applications required for the LAN network is windows XP and Microsoft exchange server 2003 to manage emails. This allows the company to install email applications in the network. The architecture required is client server architecture. This is because client server architecture allows the network to be easily managed. The network can be upgraded without disrupting the client (Trulove, 2005).

It ensures data security as data is stored in a serve and the client access it only when they have permission. In client server architecture, with network errors are minimized unlike in other networks like peer to peer. The topology required for the LAN network is star topology. In this topology only one hub or computer is used to connect other nodes. The computer acts as the central transmitter. Star topology has an advantage over other networks topology. It ensures better performance because the number of devices required to make a local area network are minimal. It also ensures isolation of devices. This is important as it prevents network failure. It has a lot of benefits from centralization, and it is also simple to understand and establish.

No network disruption when disconnecting devices. The media required for the LAN connection is UTP. This is because UTP has a small diameter compared to other media thus making it easy to install as it does not occupy big space. It is less expensive and easy to install than other network media. UTP limits degradation caused by electromagnetic interference as the cancellation effect produced by the twisted pairs helps in reducing EMF. It is installed using registered Jack (RJ- 45) connector. RJ- 45 is a connector with eight wires and is used to connect computers onto a local area network like Ethernet. Hence, it is the best to use in this network so as to save cost and improve network efficiency. It also has more advantages than other networks.

Different UTP cabling can be used. These include cat5e, cat5 and cat6. They transmit data at different speeds. Cat 5 transmits data at 100Mbps, cat5e transmits data at 1000Mbps.cat5e is the best for this network as it has higher speed than cat5. The connection to be used to connect different machines and buildings is a hub. A hub allows computers in different buildings to be connected together using star topology. A hub is used to centralize network traffic coming from different machines. Another media are repeaters. Repeaters function the same as hubs as they allow network traffic from different machines to be centralized. It also allows more than one machine to be connected together. The network operating system is Windows NT (Trulove, 2005).

Reference

Trulove, J. (2005).LAN wiring.Edition3.McGraw-Hill Profession

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