Network assignment

5.1 What you are required to do

As an independent IT consultant, you have been asked to advise on a network connection to suit a small
company. This company is outlined below. After an unhappy experience with an ISP, they have decided to
run their own internet connection and servers. Rather than specify a single solution, you are asked to pro-
vide the pros and cons of different solutions and to present these at a meeting with the company, where the
decision about the next step will be made. It is not intended at this stage to decide on the final solution, but
simply to present to the company the main options before a specialist network company is employed.

Hammer and Tong Co. Ltd

Birmingham-based Hammer and Tong Co. Ltd supplies small tools to the engineering industry. They were set
up in 1896 and the firm has been in the same family ever since. Their distribution is almost exclusively mail
order. In 1998 they had an e-commerce package put together for them by an external company; this web-based
system generally works very well and Hammer and Tong have come to rely on this form of business. Employing
30 people, they do not have a dedicated IT specialist on site but five of the staff are able to update databases
and to carry out day-to-day running of a computer system. They already have a peer-to-peer LAN that
connects to their old ISP using a single modem, used mainly for email and updating the e-commerce database.
Currently all the network traffic is handled by their ISP but unfortunately they have recently become unreli-
able.They had started to blame the e-commerce package for a series of failures but Hammer and Tong believe
that the fault lies with the ISP. Hammer and Tong have decided not to rely on a third party for what has become
a core part of their business so they require a system to provide the following performance:

1. On average, 40 orders are processed each day, the peak being approximately 100 orders on a Monday
morning reducing to about five on a Friday afternoon. Previous experience shows that for every order,
potential customers refer to their website at least ten times giving an average hit rate of 400 hits per day
but a peak of 1000 hits on a Monday morning.
2. The website software has been designed to load quickly so has a low bandwidth requirement, a typical
‘look’ at the website requiring about 80 kb of data including images. High resolution images of products
are available but most customers are regulars so these are not called upon very often. These images are
on average 140 kb each.
3. Hammer and Tong use a third party banking house to collect on-line payments but they are concerned
that hackers could gain entry to their system so a good level of security is required.
4. Profitability in the engineering sector has been lower than previous years.While the cost of the network
link is not the first priority, it will be examined very carefully before any decision is made.

5.2 What you must deliver

1. Recommendations about the network connection to the outside world
2. Recommendations on security.

5.3 Possible solutions

High bandwidth network connection possibilities:

• Cable
• ISDN
• DSL
• Satellite
• Leased line.

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Cable
Speed
The cable system was designed and installed for one-way TV signal delivery, the download bandwidth is
high but uploading data is often difficult, not due to the cabling bandwidth but design difficulties with the
installed equipment at the cable company. There are specifications such as MCNS (Multimedia Cable
Network System) and DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) but not all cable com-
panies can offer these. Most are able to supply good bandwidth for download but require a modem for
uploads. This situation will change, possibly in the near future, but the cable companies have been slow to
offer high speed net access.

Security
To connect to a client, most cable companies use the 75 ohm coaxial cable that is similar to the old ‘thick’
Ethernet cable. Cable modems generally use 10 baseT (Ethernet) and run TCP/IP over what is in effect a
small LAN. This means that one connection is shared with other users, creating a security risk so a firewall
would have to be used to avoid this risk.

Internet

10 baseT
Cable
hub
modem

Figure 5.1 Insecure cable connection

Internet
PC
used
as
10 baseT gateway
Cable
hub
modem

Figure 5.2 Secure cable connection

Effect on the LAN topology

A cable modem connection will allow several computers to be connected (often not allowed with xDSL).
This would be insecure if it was done simply via a 10 baseT hub; a better solution would be to attach a PC
to act as a gateway and to attach this to a hub. The gateway can act as a firewall.
Cable is aimed at heavy ‘home’ use and many cable providers will block the TCP/IP ports used to run
web servers etc. Currently a cable connection is not a viable solution but may be in the future particularly
in those areas where the cable laid into premises was fibre.

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 Network assignment

ISDN
ISDN was designed as a digital telephone system but has been adopted to run data communications. It
requires that ‘calls’ are set up for each communication session so is not suitable for running a web service.

DSL
The POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) was designed for a bandwidth of about 3 kHz. This bandwidth
applies to the whole channel, i.e. the connection from one telephone to the next. It was realized that the
‘local loop’, i.e. the copper wire from the exchange to the subscriber, had a far higher bandwidth provided
it is short (a few kilometres depending on which DSL standard is used). DSL or xDSL is the name given to
a range of communication standards designed to carry voice and data traffic over the local loop. It is not
available in all areas, a check can be run at www.bt.com/adsl to find out. The current xDSL standard that is
becoming available in the UK is ADSL and the best business package will provide a bandwidth of
1 Mbits/sec download and 256 kbits/sec upload but some providers will block the TCP/IP ports used to run
web servers etc.

Satellite
Although download speeds can be as high as 4 Mbits/sec, the upload speed of a satellite link is usually via
a normal modem so is not suitable for running a web server.

Leased line
Speed
A leased line is a permanently made,‘always on’ connection; the leasing is usually from a telecommunications
company. It is normal to have a line to an ISP that is in turn connected via high bandwidth leased lines to the
rest of the internet backbone. The most basic leased line will provide 64 kbits/sec increasing in 64 k incre-
ments. More expensive lines running SONET (Synchronous Optical Networking) run at 51.84 Mbits/sec and
increase in 51.84 Mb increments. Unlike DSL and cable modems, leased lines are aimed squarely at busi-
nesses and usually come with a range of permanent TCP/IP addresses and fixed domain names.

Security and its effect on the LAN topology

To achieve a reasonable degree of security a firewall is required. If this is placed between the router and
the rest of the internal network, it would not be practical to run a web server. The better but more expen-
sive option is to have a ‘demilitarized zone’ as in Figure 5.5. Here the web and email servers are outside the
firewall that protects the internal LAN but are under the protection of a dedicated firewall of their own.
This will result in ‘public’ and ‘private’ parts of the network. One of the higher costs associated with a DMZ
is the requirement to have specialized security experts set up the entire network; it is not a trivial task.

Server

Hub

Router

Internet

Figure 5.3 Insecure leased line connection

The main recommendation would be to invest in a 128 kbits/sec leased line, the additional hardware of
firewalls, servers etc. and to budget for specialized people to configure the whole system. From the figures
describing the likely hit rate on the website, it would seem logical to provide a minimum bandwidth of
64 kbits/sec. This is calculated from the peak hit rate of 1000 hits in a morning translating into 250 hits

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Server

Hub
Firewall
Router

Internet

Figure 5.4 Basic secure leased line connection

Server

Demilitarized zone

Hub
Firewall Hub Firewall
Router

Internet
Email
Web
server
server

Figure 5.5 Leased line with demilitarized zone

per hour or about 4 hits per minute. If each hit requires the upload over the network of 80 kb of data
(800 kbits) then 4 ! 800 " 3200 kbits per minute or 53 kbits/sec is required.
This figure of 53 kbits/sec is close to the maximum bandwidth of the line and does not take into consid-
eration any other traffic occurring at this peak time such as customers requiring the higher resolution
image etc. If the e-business is to grow it is vital that potential customers very rarely find they have a slow
response. For this reason it would be better to specify 128 kbits/sec as the minimum bandwidth and to take
an option on increasing this to 256 kbits/sec when required.

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