Research & Analysis

James D Gronenthal

Delaware Tech

April 2016
Introduction

In todays world if you want to run a business then you are going to need to integrate

technology to survive. The days of purely paper run businesses is dead and gone and the age of

technology is here to stay. Businesses run on computers, printers, etc. and A network is essential

to running a business. It is a means of communication, storing records, implementing data and

more. If you want to build a network it takes a lot of planning to do it right. We need to take a

look at every aspect of the networking process. Taking into consideration the hardware from

which switches, routers, and PCs that are compatible with each other, most cost effective, and

meet your companys needs. But before you even get to the hardware you need to plan out the

logical side of the network. What topology is going to be used? Where will your devices be

implemented? How will we effectively assign our addressing? These are just some of the many

questions you must ask when building a network.

A small Bank known as Schwifty and Company has hired my team to build a network

for their location in Delaware. They have 16 employees. This office is going to serve as a

headquarters for the other 2 bank locations in New Jersey and Maryland. This office will serve as

a call center, it needs to be able to store information on clients and financial information as well

from both bank locations. It also needs to hold employee information. The company also

informed me they wanted to plan for scalability, They are small now but in the future they are

hoping to expand and add more banks, and employees. Being a bank they need the network to be

secure because they are handling financial records and sensitive information.
Planning

The first thing I need to do is get the blue print of the facility to start planning out where

the devices are going to be placed. Upon reviewing the blue print I have decided to add 17 PCs.

There are a variety of different ways to arrange a network topology ranging from bus, ring, star,

and mesh. Since the company is smaller right now I believe the best one to go with is the Star

Topology. The benefit of this is that if one of the PCs goes down the network will remain intact.

The star Topology also uses less cabling than the mesh. This will make the network more reliable

than the ring and bus while more cost efficient than the mesh. The downside to a star Topology is

that if the main switch goes down the network will go down. The mesh would be ideal for the

company to stay active but the cost for extra switches and wiring would outweigh the benefits. I

would suggest that if they plan on growing in the future to invest in switching over to a mesh

when the time is right for them. I will add one switch to the network. Which will be placed in the

server room that is going to be locked at all times. The company mentioned that they planned on

expanding so I have opted to use a room for the equipment instead of just using a closet or

locked box, this way if they plan on expanding they can easily implement more devices. I am

going to add two routers to the network, the first is going to be the main router connecting the

switch to the ISP which will be in the server room. This router will be strictly cabled for a secure

and reliable connection. The second router I am going to place in the conference room. This

router will have wireless capabilities for anything that may need to access a wireless connection,

printers, laptops, tablets, etc. It will use a 5GHz signal. This covers a smaller area than the

standard 2.4 but because the company is small I believe it is ideal. It will reduce any potential

outside interference. If the company grows they will have to add more wireless access points to

cover a greater range of area. I will place 14 PCs throughout the office at each station an
employee will be working at. The 17th PC I will place inside the server room so that it can access

the system and changes can be made with the connections or file structures without having to

remote in which could cause security issues. The company will also have its own server for now.

When the company grows, I have given them advice that using cloud services would be

recommended choice.

Network

I decided to use static addressing for the purpose of the project and also because the

network is small enough to do it. Usually DHCP would be a better choice because there is less

chance of Ips conflicting with each other. Although static addressing is more secure than DHCP.

I will be using the network 192.168.0.1/24. I am going to set up a VPN to help secure the

network. A VPN or virtual private network allows you to access a public network without

making your network public. I will put the VPN on the router that is being accessed by the ISP,

also known as the boarder gateway router. To secure the network even further I will set up a

separate VLAN connecting the PC in the server room to the servers and switches, so that outside

access to the networking devices can be limited. I will close all unused ports and disable SSH

and Telnet into the devices as well to make everything more secure and prevent remoting in.

Through my research I found that there is an outside service known as BIAN. BIAN stands for

Banking industry architecture network. This service is something I would implement into the

banking system. It is similar to other systems companies would use to access key parts of their

network, for instance blackboard with Del tech, or any system you might use at one of your jobs

that helps assist you in work. BIAN partners with various software vendors to provide services to

their members giving you flexibility on the things you can access. Their mission is to basically

create a banking standard to make it easier for banks to collaborate. They would assist with
building the file structure of the network. This would make it much easier to network with other

banks and help the business grow.

Hardware/Software

The router I will use to connect the Network to the ISP is the Cisco a 880 series router.

This router features unified wireless connection, survivable telephony, advanced security,

business continuity, and WAN diversity with redundant WAN links capable of 3g or 4g

connections. This router can provide connectivity for up to 20 users. The company can add on

more routers as they grow. This router is perfect for a small business and at a cost-efficient

price. I would choose the Cisco 888E router which supports 802.11g/n and has an integrated

ISDN dial backup. Which lets you configure a backup modem line connection that can help

protect against WAN downtime. For the router in the Conference room I will install a Cisco

810 series router. These are small compact routers that are designed for machine to machine

connectivity with services, that help enable the internet of things. They have Zone-Based

Firewall capabilities to block any unwanted traffic. They feature FLEX VPN, GET VPN, and

dynamic multipoint VPN or secure IPsec traffic encryption and corporate data privacy. For our

switch, I believe we should use a Cisco Catalyst 3650 series switch. I would choose the WS-

C3650-12X48UR model. This model provides 8 X 10 gigabit ethernet ports with SFP+. SFP is

a small transceiver connects a fiber channel and gigabit ethernet optical fiber cables at the

other end. It converts serial electrical signals to serial optical signals. This switch also provides

48 ports with UPOE (universal power over ethernet) capabilities that provide up to 100-mbps.

The PCs I believe would best fit would be the Dell OptiPlex 24 7000 Series All-In-One

(7440). They boast the Intel Core i3-6100 Processor and support windows 10. Each machine

will have a 2.5 inch 500GB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive. These computers are not crazy
expensive and they are rated one of the top small business PCs by PCmag.com. For my server

I have chosen to use the Dell PowerEdge M620. It comes with 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2670

processors, 16 physical cores and 32 logical cores, x 8GB Dual Ranked PC3L-10600R, LV

RDIMMs worth of memory, and 1 x 146GB 15k 6Gb, RAID 0 hard drive. This will provide

ample power and storage for the network.

Conclusion

Throughout this project, I got to experience just a part of how a network is created and

how much needs to be considered to go into it. Even with everything I found I know there is a

lot more to know and plenty more details to look into. Each and every part of a network needs

to be planned accordingly. I got the chance to read about the differences between pieces of

equipment and understand the different capabilities they could possess. It was very difficult to

find much information on banking networks, for security reasons not a lot of companies do not

want to publish how they set up their network. I had to use a lot of prior knowledge and base

most of my research on a small business architecture. All in all I believe that this project

helped me to realize how much I have learned throughout my Major at Del tech and I believe

Schwifty and Company will be successful!

 References

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/ProductReviews/Networking/networking-a-
small-business-office-from-scratch.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366262,00.asp

http://www.cgap.org/sites/default/files/CGAP-Technical-Guide-Agent-Management-
Toolkit-Building-a-Viable-Network-of-Branchless-Banking-Agents-Feb-2011.pdf

https://bian.org/

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/small-business/resource-center/connect-
employees-offices/primer-building-small-office-network.html