You are asked to design a computer network (peer-to-peer or client/server) for an Accounting

firm in the city of Fort Valley, GA. The firm has 6 employees (including the president). Each

employee has a computer with Windows XP and a low cost ink jet printer. The company has a

good color laser jet printer located in the secretarys office. Currently, the employees need to

submit their document on a jump drive, or CD to the secretary for quality printouts. The

president of the company makes it clear to you that he wants to be the last one to get

disconnected from the color laser printer because of any technical difficulty in the network

or a failure in a networking device. He also makes it clear that he does not want to place the

laser printer in his office. The president also explains it to you that presently they do not have a

system to backup important files in all computers. He would like to see a cost effective way of

designing a computer network and doing file backups for his firm.

You visit the firm to make the initial evaluation of the site as well as the firms hardware and

software systems. You notice that the computers are all Pentium machines running at800 MHz

with 512 MB in RAM. You also notice that all computers have 10Mbs network interface card.

The color laser printer has 64 MB in RAM (expandable to 256 MB); however, it can not be

directly connected to the network because it is does not have a network interface port. You draw

a map of the site (as shown in Figure 1) and promise the firms president to give him your

network design and price quotation in three days.

Assignments:

1. Explain how you would design a network for this firm. Justify why your suggested network selection (e.g.; peer-to-peer, client/server, or wireless) is suitable for this firm. Also, address the CEOs demands as mentioned in the above. In doing real world projects, you need to give options to your clients. Thus, provide two methods of designing this network (e.g.; low cost and premium) and explain the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

2. Attach the drawing (schematic) of a network layout for this project showing the paths of wires and the location of network-closet (You may use Visio software for this task).

3. A professional price quotation to implement the design of each network. Use a spreadsheet software system such as Excel that contains price quotation templates to create the price quotations. You may need to check with www.cdw.com to find the prices of networking equipment (hubs, switches, and/or routers), various hardware systems (e.g.; wires, wiring cabinet, patch panel, raceways, backup system, etc.) and software systems (e.g.; anti-virus and spyware, operating systems, etc.). Assume that your hourly labor rate is $90.

Note that your network design must be in such away that can easily be expanded to meet the future growth of the company.

12 6' Figure 1: The layout of the law firm Closet (color printer President copy machine. and Fax First Employee o, Office Office of Secretary Second Employee 9. Fourth Employee Fifth Third Employee Employee ance 12 24' 12