You work for an advertising firm with offices in Albany, NY, and Springfield, MA. The offices in Albany serve as the headquarters.

The Albany headquarters is home to the executive team and 150 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 Springfield office hosts about 50 employees. Approximately 50% of these employees are mobile, defined as traveling more than 80% of the time.

To hire and retain the best talent, the firm allows employees to work from home. This removes the constraint that employees have to live within commuting distance from the firm's 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.

Due to an increase in opportunities for expansion to new markets, the firm has embarked on an initiative to hire and train new college graduates for the company's Future Vision program. Future Vision focuses on global expansion. The initiative is to hire graduates into the marketing, finance, and IT departments. You were hired as part of the Future Vision program and have been working at this for some time now. You have spent a considerable portion of your time troubleshooting and analyzing the organization's computer network to keep it running smoothly. Your direct supervisor and lead network administrator have been very impressed with your skills and fast learning abilities.

To determine whether you are ready to take on more responsibility, you have been asked for your input regarding the new Fayetteville, NC, office setup project. Your task is to conduct research on this area and deliver a report to the team with key considerations and recommendations for the setup of the network infrastructure. The Fayetteville office will be home to 50 employees, including the new executive vice president of sales and marketing. All the possible sites have offices located in an office building with access to fiber, cable, and T1 internet service providers. In addition to the standard network, the site must support live video teleconferencing calls with employees based at the other sites. It must also reliably send print jobs to billboard printers located in the company headquarters in Albany.

Your primary task is to respond to these questions:

• How would you approach designing the network at the new location in Fayetteville, NC?
• What considerations are key in informing the systems and resources necessary to meet the organization's needs and support the business goals and objectives?

Keep in mind that this milestone contributes to the final project for this course. It is designed to help you succeed in finalizing the project. You will complete two milestones that provide the opportunity to draft key sections of the project, receive valuable feedback from your instructor, and submit a finalized report for the final project in Module Seven.

Specifically, your report should include the following:

• Key Considerations: Summarize the key considerations of the project, being sure to identify your chosen location. For example, what are the must-haves? What are the constraints? In this section, you will:
  • Determine the appropriate communications media and mode of data transport for the new network.
    • This could be an opportunity to explain the OSI stack in relation to a modern communications network.
  • Identify the common network hardware components for this new location.
  • Describe the important IP range considerations for a company of your size.
• LAN topology
  • Describe possible LAN topologies that could be used at the new location that support the desired architecture.
  • Compare the identified LAN topology possibilities based on their relative strengths and weaknesses in regard to support practices.
  • Based on your comparison, determine the appropriate LAN topology for this location to allow for optimal support practices. Be sure to explain your reasoning.