Alices Restaurant Supply (50 points)

Alice's Restaurant Supply offers a line of specialty food products to institutional customers and restaurant chains. The firm prides itself on using only the finest ingredients and preparation methods. The owner, Alice Burns, hired you as an IT consultant to help her plan the system architecture for a new WLAN that will connect employee computers to the wired network. She asked you to start with the following questions:

1. What wireless standards could be implemented in the new system? What are the pros and cons of each standard?

2. Choose a wireless standard to implement in Alice's Restaurant Supply, and explain your choice.

3. Suppose that microwave ovens and cordless telephones are used extensively in some parts of the facility. Would that affect your IEEE 802.11 amendment choice? What standards would not be a good choice in this type of environment?

4. Suppose that the new WLAN will also provide roaming services for employees who must use portable computers and tablets in many warehouse locations. Which wireless topology would be the best choice? Explain your answer

Passing Lane (50 points)

Passing Lane is a small trucking company headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Passing Lanes information system consists of a file server and three workstations where freight clerks enter data, track shipments, and prepare freight bills. To perform their work, the clerks obtain data from the server and use database and spreadsheet programs stored on stand-alone PCs to process the data. At your meeting yesterday, Passing Lanes president approved your recommendation to create a relational database to handle operations and provide links for the companys shippers and customers.

Tasks.

1 Review the concept of supply chain management. Although Passing Lane offers services rather than products, could the SCM concept apply to the design of the new system? Why or why not?

2. What would be the advantages of selecting a Web-based architecture for Passing Lanes system?

3. Since the firm is growing rapidly, what design features should be included in the new system to ensure it can grow with the company.

4. Given that Passing Lane currently uses computers for managing their operations, what design considerations should be given to legacy systems? Explain your answer.