LOCAL AREA NETWORK SYSTEM

Local Area Network System

Faiz Ahmed Syed Shah

 LOCAL AREA NETWORK SYSTEM

MBA-IT
Semester III
SAVITRIBAI PHULE PUNE UNIVERSITY

Basics of Networking
(LAN)
 LOCAL AREA NETWORK SYSTEM

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Faiz Ahmed Syed Shah, student of
MBA – Information Technology II year has successfully completed
the Project, entitled “Local Area Network System” by the Approval
of his respected professors.

Ms. Lubna Shaikh

Mr. Mohammad Ali

Place: Pune
Date:
Time:
 LOCAL AREA NETWORK SYSTEM

Content:
I. Introduction
 What is LAN?
 Definition of LAN.
 Evolution of LAN.

II. Objective

III. Problem Specification

IV. Network Design

V. Design Specifications

VI. Assigning IP Addresses ___________________________

 Static IP Address
 Dynamic IP Address

VII. Testing

VIII. Further Enhancement

IX. Conclusion

X. Summary_____________________________________

XI. References
I. Introduction
 What is LAN

It is a privately-owned network and stands for local area network. A

network is a group of computers and other devices connected so they can pass
information back and forth. The local area network (LAN) is a network which
is designed to operate over a small physical area such as an office, factory or a
group of buildings up to a few kilometers in size. LANs very widely used in a
variety of computers to share resources (e.g., printers) and exchange
information.

Though computers are capable of carrying out their intended function in a

standalone mode, computers will be much stronger if they can exchange
information with one another. In past, countless number of business
companies had used computer in their daily run. For example, they used
computer in accounting to record every transaction of the company made, in
trading to record selling and buying information, in personnel management to
record every employee’s information and etc. However, nowadays the success
of the Internet makes people to sense that network is a much more powerful
tool for them to enhance their business and make their company running more
efficient.

 LAN Definition

The personal computers and workstations in the offices are

interconnected via LAN to share resources. The resources to be shared can be
hardware like a printer or software or data. A LAN is a form of local (limited-
distance), shared packet network for computer communications. In LAN all
the machines are connected to a single cable. The data rates for LAN range
from 4 to 16 Mbps with the maximum of 100 Mbps.

The term LAN can also refer just to the hardware and software that allows
you to connect all the devices together. In this sense, Local Talk is one kind of
LAN, Ethernet is another. (AppleTalk is the protocol for Local Talk.)

The components used by LANs can be divided into cabling standards,

hardware, and protocols. Various LAN protocols are Ethernet, Token Ring:
TCP/IP, 5MB, NetBIOS and Fiber Distributed Data Interchange (FDDI) and
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).
 LANs can be distinguished from different types of networks by their size,
their transmission technology, and their topology.

A local-area network (LAN) restricted in size, which means that it can

span in a relatively small area.

LANs use a transmission technology consisting of a cable. Traditional

LANs technology transmits at speeds of 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps and makes very
few errors. However, current LANs technology transmits at up to 10 GBPS.

Various network topologies are possible for broadcast LANs. In a linear

cable network (Bus), at any given time, one client machine is the master
machine, and that is only allowed to transmit. All other machines refrain from
sending data. The second type of broadcast LANs is the ring. In it, LAN
operating at 4 and 16 Mbps. FDDI is another example of a ring network.
 The Evolution of LAN

As there is a tremendous use of PC or desktop computers in the office

environment, it became apparent that attaching a printer or FAX machine to
each and every computer is highly expensive. Further, copying files to a disk
and moving from one computer to another to print the file is also time
consuming. Connecting computers so that they could share a printer and share
files translated into big savings.

In 1982, 10 Mbps Ethernet cards came into existence and they were very
expensive. By 1988, 10 Mbps Ethernet had acceptable performance for large
LANs and was still good for small installations. By 1990, large installations
were beginning to see congestion. Hence, alternatives to 10 Mbps cards were
becoming popular. One of these alternatives was to install a switched
architecture, rather than constructing architecture with hubs.

In 1996, 10Mbps switched LANs were providing acceptable service for

smaller installations. The awesome technology at this point was 100Mbps
shared Ethernet. By 1998 switched 10Mbps Ethernet was common in small
LANs and switched 100 Mbps Ethernet was common in large LANs. Large
LANs are beginning to see limitations of 100 Mbps when everyone on the LAN
starts doing video conferencing.

Now, Gigabyte Ethernet cards are available for sale. The 10 Mbps cards
are not used anymore. Now-i-days 10/100, 10/100/1000 auto-sensing cards
are available in the market. Everything is moving to dual mode auto-sensing
technology. Even though Gigabyte Ethernet is getting more popular now-a-
days, Gigabyte LANs are 10 times faster than a 100Mbps LAN. Ethernet was
evolved from a protocol called ALOHA. ALOHA was mainly used in packet
radio network which communicate using satellites. In brief, an earth station
sends some data, as soon as the data is ready it waits for an acknowledgement
(ACK). If it fails to get an ACK, it would time out and sends the same thing
again. The sender keeps trying until the transmission is successful. The lesson
to be learned here is that it is important to limit the number of users on a
shared network medium. Traffic analysis can help determine the maximum
number of users to ensure a reasonable Quality of Service (QOS).
II. Objective
In this project, a LAN system will be designed for a medium-sized
company. Through this networking system, the company can effectively
reduce daily running cost, the company internal works can be more systematic
and well organized, and the communication of the employees in the company
can become more efficiently. The network can be used to share files, share
company programme. Employees can communicate with one another through
some network communication programme such as ICQ and MSN Messengers.
Besides, some expensive hardware such as color printer can be shared by a lot
of employees. Finally, employees can use the network to search information.
III. Problem Specification
The following is the assumptions for the medium-sized company:

 The company contains 50 employees;

 Each employee has been provided a computer;
 The company contains 2 departments : Accounting Department
and Marketing Department;
 One department setup is a Ring Topology Setup;
 All employees in the company are allowed use the Internet;
 All employees are able to access laser printer;
 The budget of the whole computer networking project is $50,000 .

IV. Network Design

V. Design Specifications

There are two approaches to build this network – Mainframe/terminal

and server/client. In my design, server/client approach will be used. Although
the price of a terminal computer is lower than client computer, the price of a
mainframe computer is very high and cannot be afforded by a medium-sized
computer. Also, the function of a client computer is better than that of the
terminal. If the network is down, client computer can still work alone, but
terminal will not work anymore. The cost of a terminal computer is not much
higher than a client computer. Hence, I have chosen server/client network.

CAT5 UTP cables are used because the cost of UTP cable is very low and
can be easily installed. Also, CAT5 UTP cable can support high bandwidth and
up to 100Mbit per second.

There are alternative choices of cabling such as coaxial cable, fiber-optic

and wireless connection.

Coaxial cable is also very cheap and easy to install. However, network
connected by coaxial cable cannot support a lot of computers. Wireless
connection is another good choice since it does not need to deploy a cabling
system which makes installation very easy. With wireless connection, you do
not need to make any cable trays. You can also move computers around the
company and do not need to concern any cable issues. However, the cost of
wireless LAN is much expensive. Wireless LAN requires a lot of wireless hubs
and transmitters which are quite expensive. Besides, the transmission speed of
wireless LAN is much slower than that of cable-based LAN. Hence, in my
network design, wireless connection will not be used.

Another alternative choice for cabling is fiber-optics. It can support very

high bandwidth, but the cost of it is very high and the installation is very
difficult. In company’s daily operation, such high bandwidth (2Gbit per second)
is much more than enough. Hence fiber-optic cable is only used at the
network backbone that interconnects each of the individual LANs scattered
throughout the trading company. This also allows the company network to
expand in future.

To operate at 100Mbs speed, 100Base-T designed network cards and

100Base-T switched hubs are used. In general, a switch interconnects
computers and passes data among them. I use switch and do not use hubs
because the performance of switch is better. Hence, though switch is more
expensive than hub, switch is selected for the network.

Since the marketing department is very large and has a lot of computers.
Hence, marketing department is spilt to another domain and so the internal
traffic of the marketing department will not use up the bandwidth of the whole
network. In this sub-network, a primary domain server is used to maintain a
database of usernames and passwords. A file server is used for storing and
sharing files for all client computers. It also enforces security on the network
by ensuing that only individuals holding proper permissions can access the
files. In addition, a router is used to connect the marketing department’s
network to the main network. This lets computers in the marketing
department’s network can still access the company’s database server, proxy
server and email server.

Each department can print a high-end laser printers shared by a number

of computers than to purchase low-end printers for each individual computer.

An application-specific firewall is used to prevent hackers go into the

company’s network. A firewall can reject untrusted packets from the Internet
and protect computers in the intra-network. Also, it can restrict the running of
some high risk applications such as ftp and telnet. A firewall can also restrict
employees from going some

Given the trend towards web-based computing, a web server is put into
the company’s network. Web-based systems provide efficient ways to share
information, either within the company's private network or externally via the
Internet. As this is a trading company, the company can create and maintain a
company web site in the web server. Through this web site, the company can
promote its product to customers. In future, company can even extend the
function of the web site, so that customer can buy products through the web
site.

Database server supports the applications used in the company and it can
store all daily company operation information such as employee’s personal
record, company financial information, company product information and etc.
Many businesses have specialized applications that operate from network
servers. These applications may operate in conjunction with the database
systems.
 In order to speed up the Internet connection, a proxy server is employed
into the network. Besides, proxy server can prevent employee’s computer
directly communicate with external computers. This can further protect the
network from attack.

Since some information stored in the file server and database server may
be very important, so we should backup all this information constantly.
Backup server should have a tape drive are added into the network. We can
schedule the computer to make a full back up every week and make an
incremental backup every day.

All client computers in the network will use MS Windows XP Professional

Edition as the operating system since this is most common OS nowadays. PDC
server uses MS Windows 2000 Server. In order to reduce the cost, email
server, proxy server and web server will use Linux as the OS. MySQL is used as
the database management system. Also, hardware-based firewall and
hardware-based print server will be used since the performance of hardware-
based device is better and the configuration of them is much simpler.
VI. Assigning IP Addresses in a LAN

There are two ways to assign IP addresses in a LAN. You can manually
assign a static IP address to each computer in the LAN, or you can use a special
type of server that automatically assigns a dynamic IP address to each
computer as it logs into the network.

 Static IP addressing

Static IP addressing means manually assigning a unique IP address to

each computer in the LAN. The first three octets must be the same for each
host, and the last digit must be a unique number for each host. In addition, a
unique hostname will need to be assigned to each computer. Each host in the
LAN will have the same network address (192.168.1.0), broadcast address
(192.168.1.128), subnet mask (255.255.255.0), and domain name
(yourcompanyname.com). It’s a good idea to start by visiting each computer in
the LAN and jotting down the hostname and IP address for future reference.

 Dynamic IP addressing

Dynamic IP addressing is accomplished via a server or host called DHCP

(Dynamic Host Configuration Program) that automatically assigns a unique IP
address to each computer as it connects to the LAN. The DHCP service is a
program or device that will act as a host with a unique IP address. An example
of a DHCP device is a router that acts as an Ethernet hub (a communications
device that allows multiple host to be connected via an Ethernet jack and a
specific port) on one end and allows a connection to the Internet on the
opposite end. Furthermore, the DHCP server will also assign the network and
broadcast addresses. You will not be required to manually assign hostnames
and domain names in a dynamic IP addressing scheme.
VII. Testing

 We should first use cable tester to test each CAT 5 cable and ensure
that every cable is connectable and no broken inside.
 To test the completely configured LAN, make sure that the computers
are able to communicate with each other after the bootup process.
 To determine whether each computer can communicate with every
other computer in the LAN, use the ping command. Open any terminal
window on the current host and type the command ping <IP address>
or <hostname>.
 Note that you must type either the IP address or the hostname in order
for the ping command to work properly.
 If you have configured the DNS name server specification properly, the
ping <hostname> command should resolve the hostname into a
corresponding IP address. Otherwise, you will need to use the IP
address that you should currently already have listed for all computers
in the LAN. The ping command will send messages across the LAN to
the designated IP address or computer.

 Check if the servers are working properly.

 Check if each client can login the network.
 Check if each client can connect to the servers and use the services
provided by the server.
 Check if the network speed is acceptable.
 Check if the backup server can successfully backup the data and
restore the data.

After the above checking, we can let employees of that company to test the
network.
VIII. Summary
The process of setting up a LAN using Red Hat Linux is a relatively
straightforward task even for users with little or no LAN background when the
preceding steps are carefully understood and performed. Moreover, there are
vast resources available on the Web that describe in more detail the topics
covered in this article. A good start would be to feed keywords (like LANs,
configuring LANs, Linux network configuration, and TCP/IP) into your
favorite Web search engine. You will be amazed at the wealth of information
that is available on configuring LANs, building networks, Red Hat Linux
network installation/configuration, the TCP/IP protocol suite, and on and on.
Good luck!

IX. Further Enhancement

In this network design, there are some feasibilities for further expansion
of the network. The backbone of the whole network can use fiber-optics which
can support much more computers.

If the company extends its size and opens many branches in different
countries, Virtual Private Network (VPN) server can be added into the
network. Then company branches’ network in different countries can be
connected together. In another point of view, individual employee may access
company network at home through VPN connection. This is a cheap way to
enhance the network since we only need to spend about $30,000 to buy a VPN
server.

To be more stable and secure, web and email server can be split into two
servers, so that when one server is hacked or down, another server will not be
affected.

There is a kind server called Backup Domain Controller Server (BDC)

which can automatically replace the job of PDC server when PDC is down. That
will make the network more trustable.
X. Conclusion
A medium-sized company network has been designed and every parts of
the network have been carefully analyzed. After creating this network, I am
sure the run cost of the company can be reduced since the computer resources
can be better used and managed. Also, communication between employees can
be more efficiently.

XI. References

[1] Google.com

[2] https://viptela.com

[3] https://developer.ibm.com

 THANK YOU 