WLAN Plan for Acme Manufacturing Co.

Acme Manufacturing Co. is growing and expanding its operations with the acquisition of a plant in China as well as several other offices throughout the United States. The organization needs a network solution that will handle the current network and be able to grow with the organization over the coming years.

Connection Types and IP Addressing Scheme

All Company locations will connect to the Atlanta Head Quarters office through a T1 connection; this will provide the bandwidth required to handle the multiple connections from the remote offices across the world. For the Engineering department in the Atlanta, GA office an ISDN line would work best for this location. The distribution offices will require an ADSL connection, this should be sufficient for each of these locations. The plant facility in China will also require an ISDN for this location to provide the bandwidth required, get more info.

The following table shows the IP addressing scheme that will be used on the company’s network, the table will also summarize the connection types used at the different company locations.

Telecommunications System

VoIP will facilitate the necessary requirements for voice and video communications. VoIP will be able to provide for the internal and external telecommunications; additionally, the video conferencing needs of the company will be provided for. The use of a hybrid VoIP/PBX hybrid system may also satisfy the company’s communication needs. Both systems will meet the communication needs of the organization while providing efficient and low cost administration and usage. VLAN solution

The solution for the issue of having department personnel spread across the globe is to implement a Virtual Local Area Network, or VLAN, solution. The VLAN solution will require establishing six VLANs using the IEEE 802.1Q standard. The six VLANs will be the sales department on VLAN1; the administrative staff will be on VLAN2; the engineering and plant facilities will be on VLAN3; marketing department on VLAN4; accounting on VLAN5; corporate operations on VLAN6.

Recommendations for network equipment

The basic equipment required at each location will be the modem device for the chosen connection method at each location, at least one server, a router and multiple switches and hubs. The routers deployed across the company will be using Layer 4 switching. Recommendations for wireless technology

Wireless technology should be implemented at each location as required because of the overhead required of the information security department. If and when the decision to implement wireless network at a given location is made, a review of current security policies must be performed before the wireless network in implemented. Recommendations for securing the network

The network should be secured using firewalls, proxy servers, and antivirus software. The wireless segment should be protected using the methods mentioned already in addition to WPA encryption protocol and inhibiting the SSID beacon broadcast. User access control needs to be addressed as well, including establishing and enforcing user identification standards and user authentication and password control.