The Ocean Skipper is a new four-deck ship to be used by marine biologists for studying fish and plant life in the Pacific Ocean

Formal Writing Assignment: Ocean Skipper WAN and Wireless Networking

The Ocean Skipper is a new four-deck ship to be used by marine biologists for studying fish and plant life in the Pacific Ocean.This Ocean Skipper is part of a five ship fleet used in collecting ambient oceanic information in the Pacific Ocean.

This ship is to be equipped with both cable and wireless network access on all decks. Several work areas of the ship will have stationary desktop computers, printers, and large-format printers. The equipment on each deck will be connected by 100 Base-T copper cable and the connection between decks will use multi-mode optical fiber cable. The top two decks will each have 20 desktops, two laser printers, and a large-format printer.

The lower decks will have 10 desktops each. Also, twenty of the ship’s scientists and technicians will use laptop computers, moving them to several different work locations within the ship. Windows 7, Linux, and Mac OS workstations will be used. The ship will have four servers for research and administrative use that will be housed in a server room on the top deck.

You have been hired by Network Design Consultants Inc. to work on the design of this network.

As it is done for a new network design, the chief research scientist who is coordinating this project asks you to prepare a Network Planning Document narrative.

A list of topics to be included in this planning document are as follows:

• Purpose of the network: which involves determining how the network will be used, what information will be transported, what devices will be shared, what software will be used, and the types of devices that will be connected.
• Anticipated network traffic: which is used to determine the amount of traffic and the traffic patterns.
• Redundancy requirements: which entail the need for fault tolerance and uninterrupted use of different portions of the network.
• Future growth: which involves anticipating how the network will grow and how to design for growth.
• WAN connectivity: which involves determining how a WAN will connect into the LAN; for this project that WAN connectivity to the other ships on the fleet might be through satellite communications.
• Cost: which includes projecting the cost of cable, wireless and wired devices, installation costs, support costs, training, and ongoing fees, such as for WAN access.

Implementing Wireless Communications

The next step in the project is to find ways to enable mobile laptop users to connect to the network on the top two decks. On the top deck, they need to have network communications in a work area that spans about 190 feet in diameter. On the same deck, there is an area within the dining hall that is about 40 feet in diameter where laptop users will occasionally work, such as during meetings. On the next deck below there is a work area 170 feet in diameter in which mobile laptops will be used.

Write a Wireless Network Implementation Plan that describes your design for wireless communications for these areas.

• Your design should describe the location and connection method of access points; the wireless standards; the security concerns when the ship is at sea and the security concerns when the ship is in port.
• You should also discuss possible problems in implementing a wireless network (as described in our textbook) but you need to explain in your own words how these problems will be avoided in your wireless network implementation for this ship.

Use the attached network diagram to describe your design ideas and explain the network topology design principles for connecting cabled computers, printers, and plotters, on each deck in the ship. Also include your suggestions for modifying the attached network diagram to isolate the switches and servers on the network by using sub-netting or super-netting.