4-2 Scenario-Based Assignment: Troubleshooting

In this assignment you will take on a project with Newton Ad Agency. You have now been hired for the position of junior network administrator and charged with various tasks. These include troubleshooting, as you will see in this assignment. Getting to the root cause of an issue is one of the most important tasks for a network professional, and you are about to take it on. While this assignment makes use of the same company as the final project scenario, it is not a final project milestone. It is, however, an opportunity to try out your emerging knowledge in a practical manner that directly prepares you for working with networks.

IT 340 Module Four Troubleshooting Assignment Guidelines and Rubric

Overview: Weve run into a bit of trouble with the Network. As a junior network administrator, you have been asked by your managers to perform a series of tasks to support the functionality of the network at Newton Ad Agency. Now you have been given responsibility of managing and troubleshooting some networking issues between Austin and Minneapolis. Recently, there have been reports of intermittent network connectivity between Minneapolis and Austin that have resulted in several router restarts with no resolutions to the problem. Jim and Jenna have task you with identifying the root cause of the issue.

In this assignment, you will write a paper that explains in a clear, convincing manner the steps you would take to identify the causes of this problem and what you would do to correct it.

Scenario: Network professionals often find that issues with a network reflect particular conditions specific to a business case. Therefore, a great way to approach this troubleshooting assignment is to reflect on what you have learned about Newton Ad Agency and its networking conditions. Again, here is the Newton Scenario that informs your work throughout the course:

The Newton Ad Agency is an advertising firm with offices in Austin, Texas; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and New York City, New York. The offices in Austin include a headquarters and a satellite office located two miles away in a rural area.

The Austin headquarters is home to the executive team and 750 employees. The headquarters also stores the corporate data and is the corporate internet backbone. It hosts the IT department that centrally manages all LAN services, including the wireless LAN. The IT department also manages the wide area network (WAN) that connects all of the offices via site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) tunnels.

The Minneapolis and New York offices host about 200 employees each. Approximately 50% of these employees are mobile (i.e., travelling more than 80% of the time). The New York office focuses on producing and disseminating large advertising media content to clients. For this reason, the New York office hosts the corporate media and web servers. The rural satellite office in Austin focuses on billboard ad designs and is connected to the corporate WAN with a wireless point-to-point bridge to the Austin headquarters data center. The rural office is home to 100 employees.

To hire and retain the best talents, Newton Ad Agency allows employees to work from home. This removes the constraint that employees have to live within commuting distance from the firms offices. Remote and mobile employees are provided access to the corporate network via a VPN client. The VPN client requires employees to have access to reliable internet services to allow for effective collaboration across teams, and for access to media content. The company provides all employees with a laptop with full disk encryption, data loss prevention (DLP), and antivirus software. The IT department manages all corporate laptops and has the ability to log into all systems for support. This means that all laptops are centrally managed by the one IT department.

As you review this scenario, check to see how the reported trouble with the network may arise from what you know about Newton and use these observations to inform your answer.

As you compose your work on this assignment, be sure to clearly identify and list troubleshooting steps and proposed solutions. You also need to explain your to reasoning in a clear manner that others can easily recognize. This needs to be your best writingclear, concise, well-reasoned, and well-supported. While academic sources are not required for this assignment, be sure to cite them correctly APA style if you use them.