FractalApps is a software development start-up. It was founded by three friends who went to undergrad school together at the University of Maryland. They founded their startup recently and set up headquarters at the condo of the two founders in Washington, DC. They have focused their attention on mobile app development and have developed and successfully marketed a popular app for job seekers. Now they are expanding their company into a full-fledged software development house.
They have recently received a cash infusion from an angel investor in Silicon Valley and are ready to build out their business. Their plan is to have three locations:
- a small headquarters in DC where the founders and senior staff reside
- a sales office based in NYC (Brooklyn),
3 a development house in San Francisco where the bulk of the developers live and work.
They are looking for your team to develop standardized and secure network design for their business and they need guidance on what the hardware/software requirements are at the different locations. In your plan and diagram(s) you don't need to specify the number of workers or workstations in each location, but you need to address the number of locations and type of network connections and support they need. The number of employees working at or remotely for any location is not known but they do require a secure way for mobile workers to remote into the network and participate as if they were in the office. Many of the sales staff are in the field, while many of the development staff want to be able to work from practically anywhere.
Once again, you are preparing a higher-level functional proposal for the Senior leadership of the firm. They are NOT technologists interested in make, model, part number or a detailed vendor pricing. DO NOT get lost in the weeds (In other words, do not submit cut-and -past-vendor specific sales pitch materials that you will find on the web from vendors ?)
Your Deliverable:
A written document describing the functional-based Network diagram(s) depicting the 3-site connected company network design that includes site-specific networks and considers any unique needs based on their size and functions.
Your plan must cover the four main topics below. Please provide descriptive headings for each. Designs should be constructed using fundamental network devices (devices, switches, routers, cables, servers, etc.) at each location. A design submitted that simply depicts connections to and from cloud-based service services will be graded as zero.
1 Identification of a minimum of five specific business requirements that relate to the design and implementation of the network. (You need to show the business and technical audience that will be funding and managing these three locations a design that they will support both functionally and financially)
2 Definition of the most appropriate cabling for the local area network(s); define the network components in the local area network and explain your reasoning for selecting each of these
.
3 Definition of the wide area network infrastructure (technology); including the network components in the wide area network and explain your reasoning for selecting each of these.
4 Definition of the VPN components (hardware/software) for the organization. Explain what components go where, and what is required on the mobile devices. Justify your recommendation.
Sample Solution