College Network Connectivity

Your state�s university is in the final stages of planning a large Visual Communications College for a group of 250 employees consisting of 150 faculty and 100 staff who will work in two adjacent buildings. Each faculty and staff will use computers that run Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Professional, Fedora Linux, or Mac OS X. The employees work with a variety of software, including word processing, research, databases, spreadsheets, programming software, and mathematical calculation software. The buildings in which they work are not networked, and the college plans to network each building and connect both networks. The college has also decided to purchase a Windows Server 2003 and a UNIX server for all to access. Both servers will be in a secure computer room in one of the buildings. Also, the university plans to connect to an Internet Service Provider so each employee can easily access the Internet. Explain how to handle the following concerns.

Answer the following questions in a Word document:

1.1) What equipment must be purchased in order for each employee�s computer to be connected to the network?

Ans: Requirements:

• 250 people divided in two buildings, with 150 and 100 people in each.

• OS: XP Pro, W2K Pro, Fedora Linux, Mac OSX (no quantity nor versions given, so I'll assume a mixed bag of OSes used.

• Software: Word Processor, Research tools, Databases, Spreadsheets, Programming and Mathematical Calculation.

• Current setup: No current network, nor are the two buildings networks.

• NOS: Windows 2003 Server and a UNIX server.

• Additional access: ISP (Assuming one Internet router will serve both buildings)

Assuming that the workstations are already purchased, we will setup the Windows 2003 server with Active directory, and UNIX Server as a file server. UNIX server will be setup with both NFS and Samba to allow connectivity for Windows (XP Pro and W2K Pro) and Unix variant workstation operating systems (Mac OSX and Linux). Additionally, CAT5e cabling will be laid out across both buildings. Assuming the buildings have some kind of an underground utilities setup connecting the two physically, we could lay out a dual Fiber cable setup to hook the two buildings up (if physical connection is not possible then Wifi or leased lines would need to be employee, in this case we will assume Fiber connectivity is possible). We will need media converters to convert between the Fiber to Ethernet signal. The building with most employees should host the servers for quicker access to more people, allowing room for growth on the other building. Additionally, network equipments such as several