You have been called in to consult on a new network design for CNT Books. The requirements of this design are summarized as follows:

The building has three floors. There are 300 user workstations and 10 servers. Users must be grouped according to the projects they're working on, but the users for each project are located on all three floors. There must be fault tolerance for communicating between the floors.

• What features would you look for on the switches you purchase for this design?
• Explain why you would want each feature.
• Do you need to include any other devices in this design?

Answer:

They must use high level modems so that they can share each other project and there must be an original data and a duplicate data must be changed accordingly. Using LAN connection through all these workstations must be connected to respective server accordingly.

The following devices are included in this design:

• VLAN: Virtual Local Area Network
• STP: Spanning Tree protocol
• LAG: Link Aggregation

1. A VLAN is a group of devices on one or more LANs that are configured to communicate as if they were attached to the same wire when in fact they are located on a number of different LAN segments. Because VLANs are based on logical instead of physical connections, they are extremely flexible.
2. Spanning Tree protocol operates on switches and bridges and it is used to avoid loops in a network between interconnected network devices.
3. LAG, The use of two or more links or network connections between a pair of switches to increase throughput or bandwidth is called Link Aggregation.

• Stackable and modular switches are best for this scenario since the users must be grouped according to the projects they are working on, but the users for each project are located on all three floors.

• Forwarding rates must be higher since the fault tolerance is necessary

• Port density must be considered as per the workers in each group on each floor.

• High Performance is needed to assure the traffic flow.

• Routers are used to increase the speed and reduce the traffic overhead for switches.