Case Project 6-1
You've just been hired at ConnectSpree, a small but growing internet service provider. One of your first goals is to learn about the network-that is, to determine its physical and logical topologies, access method, throughput rates, type of equipment, and the way this equipment is interconnected. Although you don't yet have an access card that will let you into the secure telco rooms and equipment rooms, you do have permission to log on to the routers and switches. Given what you learned in this chapter and in previous chapters, what kind of network information can you glean from issuing commands on a router or switch? What kind of information could you obtain from issuing commands on your workstations that's connected to this network? What kind of information do you suppose would not be evident unless you could physically access the network hardware?
Case Project 6-2
Now that you know more about connectspree's network, you begin drawing a map of its devices and connections, starting with its internal LAN. Suppose the company's LAN consists of six workgroup switches and four routers (and no hubs). The workgroup switches are distributed one to a floor in the connect spree building, but employees belonging to the company's departments-accounting, human resources, engineering, and customer service are not on the same floor as the rest of the employees in their departments. The company's four internal servers are located with the routers in one data room on the first floor. Make a ketch of how the devices on this network might be physically connected. Include all switches, routers, and servers, plus a few workstations from each department. Next use dashed lines to indicate the path that data would travel between a workstation in the accounting department on one floor to another accounting department workstation on a different floor.
Case Project 6-3
Security is always a concern at ConnectSpree, and your manager has told you that the accounting department has requested additional security to protect the data its employees exchange among themselves. You suggest grouping all the accounting department workstations into their own VLAN. Describe how this would increase the security of the accounting department's data. Then, on the same network map you drew in Case Project 6-2, add enough workstations to eight accounting department workstations on different floors and group these workstations in a VLAN. If the accounting department workstations belong to a VLAN how will they exchange data with the Engineering, human resources, and customer service departments over the LAN? Draw a dashed line to represent the exchange of data between an accounting department workstation and a workstation in the human resources department. What has changed, if anything, in the path these two workstations take to send and receive data to and from each other since you added the VLAN?
Case Project 6-4
You have worked as a network engineer for a few years, but your job at ConnectSpree is the first opportunity you've had to work for an ISP. You'll be working on the part of ConnectSpree's network that provides customer connections to the internet. This network relies on hardware and connections that differ from those found on ordinary office networks. List some ways in which an ISP network's hardware would differ from hardware found on the LAN or WAN of a nonprovider network. For example, in what ways do you suppose ConnectSpree's routers differ from the routers at, say, a public high school or at an insurance office? What kind of routing protocols and throughput rates would ConnectSpree's border routers support? What kinds of gateways would you probably find on ConnectSpree's network?