Introduction

Kaplan, an international education organization has tasked the design and

implementation of a new office located at Orchard road. The new office will comprise

of three departments namely, Human Resource, Sales Consultants and Accounting

Executives with forecast of not exceeding more than 50 personnel in the future.

Several information has been given by the Network Director to facilitate the

implementation of the new network design, one Domain server where the Active

Directory is to be installed, one DNS and DHCP server that is to provide both DNS

and DHCP services, a third party email service and the network IP (Internet Protocol)

address to be referenced is 10.64.136.105/25.

Transmission media

Transmission media is the channel that communicates electronic information from

sender to receiver in two forms, Guided and Unguided (Polak, Laskowski, 2016).

A Guided media is also known as a wired transmission media, it transmits electronic

information via a directed physical link through physical mediums. Guided media

have higher speed and are more secure however, are limited to shorter distances.

The major types of Guided media includes,

(i) Twisted pair cables where two separate insulated wires are wounded

around each other in a protective sheath. This media is sub categorised

further into two types known as the Shielded and Unshielded pair. The

shielded pair boosts better performance at higher data rate and eliminates
 interferences but is bulky and expensive which leads to difficulty in

installation (Polak, Laskowski, 2016).

(ii) Optical fibre cable which utilizes the reflection of light through a medium

that is made of transparent plastic or glass core while covered by a

cladding. This media has Wavelength Division Multiplexer that allows

unidirectional and bidirectional modes. It allows even higher capacity and

bandwidth in comparison to other transmission media, has lesser

attenuation on signals, is immune to interference of electromagnetic nature

and is highly resistant to any corrosive substances or materials. However,

this media is extremely fragile, expensive and highly difficult to install

(Polak, Laskowski, 2016).

Unguided media on the other hand which refers to wireless transmission without the

need of a physical medium, compromises of the following types,

(i) Radiowaves. This transmission media is the most common wireless media

used in modern times due to its easy to generate and high material

penetration nature. Current day, this is found mostly in wireless routers,

Bluetooth devices and radios (Polak, Laskowski, 2016).

(ii) Infrared. These wireless media is used for extremely short distances. It

does not possess the capacity to penetrate most materials thus it is mainly

used in accessory hardware like TV remote and wireless mouse (Polak,

Laskowski, 2016).
For Kaplan’s network design, the combination of both guided and unguided

transmission media is utilised. The network design will consist of the following

transmission media in detail,

(i) Cat 5 unshielded twisted pair cable will be used to link up the entire

internal network infrastructure from endpoints to the firewall whilst being

distributed through a series of switches to bridge the coverage of areas

within the office. Other transmission media are not considered due to price

point, ease of installation, availability and capacity of maintenance

required.

Network Components

Upon the identification of transmission media, the next stage of planning will be the

bulk of the network infrastructure, hardware. T

Each network component is described in detail below to further explain the usage

and purpose.

(i) Routers, the main hub of accepting and transmitting electronic data from

the company’s internal network to the external internet facing network.

(ii) Switches. The main bridge within the company’s network. Switches

facilitate the sharing of electronic data by converging the devices on

several VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) into a single internal network

through multiple ports thus acting as a multiport bridge.

 (iii) Access points (APs). Unlike LAN, which requires a physical connection,

the APs allow wireless internet connection through a laptop, mobile or

desktop network card. This allows employees within the office access to

the company’s internal network whilst gaining mobility within the premise.

(iv) Endpoints. The endpoints consists of several clusters of equipment. Aside

from the laptops, the servers are the ones that will assist in the facilitation

of network infrastructure.

Network Diagram

To further illustrate the design flow, a Star Topology network diagram of the Orchard

office is displayed below (Orchard Network Diagram). Inter transmission for the data

of the two offices between Wilkie Edge office and Orchard office will ride on a leased

line service so that both offices are able to access data that is shared between each

other despite being different physical sites. The network diagram is designed with

the focus of high availability to reduce potential down time and abrupt cessation of

productivity at any time of day. This aids in regular maintenance and patching that is

required to keep the infrastructure up to date against potential cyber-attacks.

Computation of IP address

The next stage in Network design is the calculation of IP addresses.

The following working will compute the network IP address, the first assignable IP

address, the last assignable IP address, the broadcast IP address, and the range of

assignable IP address.

The given IP address is 10.64.136.105/25 which classifies it as a Class A IP.

The CIDR requested for 25 bits

This computes the subnet mask to be 255.255.255.128

This computes the subnet address to be 10.64.136.0

To find the number of subnets available the formula of 2 N is applied.

The final computed details are,

IP Address: 10.64.136.105

Subnet Address: 10.64.136.0

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.128

Possible Number of Subnets: 131072

Hosts per Subnet: 126

First assignable IP: 10.0.0.1

Last assignable IP: 10.255.255.254

Due to the extremely large possible subnets available, the total utilised subnets for

this design will start with the first 5 ranges and the remainder to be reserved as

spares. The ranges will be,

Subnet Mask Range Broadcast

10.0.0.0 255.255.255.128 10.0.0.1 to 10.0.0.126 10.0.0.127
DNS/DHCP
In the requirement of the network director, a DNS and DHCP server is required for

the design.

Every device that is connected to the internet uses a unique IP address. This allows

other machines that are connected to find one and other. A Domain Name System is

like the phonebook of the internet (Hoogendoorn, 2021). It translates domain names

into IP addresses through numbers. This also works within the internal network of

the company.

Threats

With current day advancement in technology, cyber threats are fundamentally the

new normal (Hodson, 2019). Threats are classified in several categories of their own

such as, Malware, Man-In-the-Middle (MITM), Distributed-Denial-Of-Service

(DDOS), Phishing and Zero-Day Exploits.

Malware attack comes in a variety of forms such as, viruses, ransomware, Trojan or

worms. They work by breaching through the network via vulnerabilities or when an

end user clicks on an email attachment which then installs it. Malware is capable of

blocking access, covertly obtaining information or disrupting the entire system to be

inoperable. Thus it is advisable to have end point protection such as anti-virus

software installed which will identify and quarantine these malicious files.

Attackers are able to disrupt the traffic and siphon information through

eavesdropping (Hodson, 2019). Thus it is critical that devices are encrypted and

secured with passwords with password changes occurring every 3-6 months at a

time.
Phishing attacks are the most commonplace as they are usually sent through email

appearing as a legitimate or reputable source. Attackers will then attempt to capture

sensitive information such as credit card details or even install Malware to the

victim’s device. It is always important to educate end users on how to identify

phishing mails and on top of that messaging gateway filters can be implemented to

further exercise caution against such attacks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this report has fulfilled the objective of defining the transmission media

and hardware components that were chosen for the network design.