Importance:

a$.$ Cost under $$600-5-$ critical

b$.$ Cost under $$300-3-$ important

c$.$ Minimum of $40$ ports $-5-$ critical

d$.$ Faster than $100$Mbit ports $($Gigabit$)-1$ not very important

e$.$ Managed$/$unmanaged$-0-$not important

Assessing the options:

There are many brands that manufacture switches with literally hundreds of models out there. For the sake of this example, let's narrow it down to $3.$ Because we need at least $40$ ports, we double up on two of the models. See the table below for their summarised information:

$\backslash$table$[[$Model$,$No$.$ Ports,Speed $($Mbps$),$Cost $($$$),$Managed?$],[$CiscoSF $300-242,242=48,100,259\mathrm{.}002=518\mathrm{.}00,$Yes$],[$Dlink DGS$-1210-52,48+4$ SFP$,1000,495\mathrm{.}00,$No$],[$Netgear JGS$524$AU $2,242=48,1000,152\mathrm{.}002=304\mathrm{.}00,$No$]]$

You've been hired as a networking consultant for a small business firm. So far, the business has been operating out of a single office, using a chain of Ethernet hubs to connect $20$ computers and a single server. The current network is plagued by congestion issues, which is drastically decreasing the company's performance and office morale. The business also has plans to expand its operations by leasing out another office across town and hiring more staff. Seeing the expansion as a convenient time for a network overhaul, the task falls to you to network the two offices together and support the new offices.

After the expansion, there are two offices: A and $B.$ They have the following structures:

Office $A($new$)$:

Floor $1$:$12$ computers $+2$ file servers

Floor $2$:$28$ computers

Office B $($old$)$:

Floor $1$:$20$ computers $+1$ server

Office A will be getting completely new computers with Gigabit NICs. Office B will continue to use its existing hardware, which contain only $100$ Mbit NICs.

Each office requires switches to connect the local network, plus a router to link the two offices together,

Part $3$ of your assignment requires you to procure routers, switches, and wireless access points for a site given in the scenario. You are expected to compare four models for each of the three types of devices and use well$-$justified attributes for your WDMs$.$ Make sure to consider the number of workstations at the procurement site to determine the specifications required.

Use the time you have left to brainstorm the different attributes you should consider for your WDMs and begin researching router, switch, and access point models. For enterprise routers and switches, Cisco, Juniper, and HPE are good vendors to look into. You may wish to take into account speed metrics like throughput, number of ports, security features etc. and should justify the attributes that you choose. This is NOT a group task. You may discuss the assignment generally with your fellow students, but you may not work together on the specifics of this task, or show your work to others.