Introduction - Office Network Design and Components
The following report includes overall network connectivity through the floor. Various components and the use of those components are briefly described in this section. Through the proper observance of this report, one can understand the networking technology and its significance of it. However, this report contains several images and diagrams that properly display the internal connectivity of the networking. The proper topologies and the protocol for the travel agency floor are added in this report. As a network engineer, the proper report regarding networking of the travel agency is described and discussed. As per the requirement, a proper utilization of the network system has been added in this section.
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Purpose of Network
Role of Networks
Connecting users and devices enable communication, collaboration, and information sharing. Well-designed networks significantly improve productivity in organizations by allowing employees to easily share documents, messages, resources, and other data seamlessly from any connected device. This enables the partnership on projects, exchange of information, and overall productivity. The Networks also provide centralized access to key organizational resources like storage, applications, and printers through servers (Ahad et al.2020). This removes the need for separate local storage on each device, enabling reliable access and shared use of resources. The Networks additionally offer redundancy against the device and connection failures by having multiple access points and routing mechanisms. However, it has various significances in the aspect of commercial uses. A commercial networking device has various components such as routers, switches, UTM, and NAS devices.
Network Type
Several network types are suited for different purposes, scopes, and scales of networking. One of the significant types of it is the Local area networks (LANs), connecting devices such as computers, printers, and servers in a small geographic area like an office or building. One of the main advantages of LAN is that LAN provides high-speed local connectivity crucial for activities like sharing files between office workers.
Another type of it is the Wide area networks (WANs) that connect LAN. The advantage of WAN connecting with the LAN is it can connect across larger geographic distances like cities, countries, or globally. WANs utilize transmission systems like fiber optic cables and cellular networks to achieve broad geographic reach.
Campus area networks (CANs) interconnect devices across a university or corporate campus. One of the significant advantages of CAN is that it can operate over large areas and geographical locations. However, it has a disadvantage where the CANs only are owned by a single entity.
Personal area networks (PANs) are short-range networks centered on people and their devices like phones, tablets, and laptops (Aljuhani et al.2021). PANs involve small networks of up to 10 meters for personal connectivity which makes it more user-friendly. One of the main advantages of it is that the Metropolitan area networks (MANs) cover an entire metropolitan area like a city. But the only disadvantage is the MANs deliver connectivity across a localized area.
Figure1: Network Connectivity
System Type
Two major network system types include peer-to-peer and client-server architectures. In peer-to-peer networks, separate devices are mainly connected and share resources such as storage, applications, and printers directly. However, it provides decentralized connectivity without centralized servers. Mainly, peer-to-peer networks lack centralized security controls and scalability can be puzzling. In client-server networks, client devices access the required resources from centralized servers. This provides centralized control and supervision of access through the internal server.
Topology
Network topologies define how the devices connect in a network, both physically and logically. Based on the travel agencies' floor expansion, several topologies can be required. The Important topologies include bus networks where devices connect to a common backbone of the network, ring networks that connect all of the devices in a circular loop, and star networks with the connections unified through a hub. Several topologies that can be used for the expansion and proper designing of travel agencies are star topology, mesh topology, bus topology, and hybrid topologies.
Star Topology
Figure2: Star Topology
The star topology and its nodes are mainly connected with the central connection of the network. However, these nodes are internally and individually connected between the networks. The routers, hubs, and switches are mainly connected between them (Cao et al.2019). There are several advantages and disadvantages of star topologies.
Advantage
Easy to manage and diagnose network issues.
Easy to expand new devices can easily be added to this topology.
Troubleshooting is very easy so this is more reliable.
The network traffic bypasses multiple devices so the performance is up to the mark.
Disadvantage
One of the significant disadvantages is the dependency on the central hub of the network.
The components of this infrastructure are mainly very costly.
The installation cost of the network is very high.
On the expansion of the floor plan of the travel agency one of the significant network topologies needed for the office is bus topology. In this network topology, the connection of the network is singularly connected with a single cable or line (Bhattacherjee et al.2019). The advantages and disadvantages of the bus topology are written below.
Advantage
One of the significant advantages of this topology is the cost-effectiveness of it.
These topological network systems are easy to expand.
Disadvantage
Single-point failure is one of the significant failures of this topological network.
The efficiency of this network is not up to the mark.
The security concerns and data collision issues are one of the significant drawbacks of this network topology.
Mesh Topology
Figure4: Mesh Topology
A mesh topology is mainly a network setup where each PC and network device is interconnected with one another. However, this topology setup allows most transmissions to be distributed even if one of the connections goes down. The advantages and disadvantages are mentioned below.
Advantage
As in this topology, the devices are interconnected so this enhances the reliability of the network.
Data is transmitted bypassing the other devices which is why the security of the network is very high.
This type of network is highly scalable.
The congestion of the network is very minimal in this type of topology.
Disadvantage
Installation of the mesh network is very complicated.
The overall cost of the network is very high and expensive.
This topology requires a lot of space in the network which can be very significant.
Networking Standards
The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model describes 7 layers of network communication. The link between network, transport, session, presentation, and application (Qiu et al.2020). The physical layer handles bit transmission. The data link layer delivers node-to-node data transfer. The network layer routes packets and the transport layer delivers end-to-end communication and reliability. The session layer manages the connections. The presentation layer handles data formatting and encryption and the application layer enables process-to-process communication.
The TCP/IP model has mainly 4 layers network access, internet, transport, and application. The network access layer combines OSI's physical and data link layers. However, the internet layer equals the OSI network layer. The TCP/IP transport and application layers resemble the OSI transport and application layers. Mainly, the TCP/IP model combines the OSI session and the basic presentation layers into its application layer.
Protocols
The Communication protocols provide standard rules for devices to communicate across the network, such as IPv4 and IPv6 specify how data packets are arranged and addressed to enable internetworking (Ahad et al.2020). The IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses while IPv6 increases this to 128-bits to upsurge the address space. HTTP sets up browser requests and how servers respond with pages or data and the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) enables email transmission by defining how the messages are directed between mail servers.
Network Devices and Operations
Networking Devices
Different networking devices can be used in the travel agency. The description of these networking devices is as follows.
Switches- This is a device that does the work of improving the efficiency of the network. It also limits the sharing of information at the nodes.
Bridges- This does the work of connecting different hosts or “network segments”.
Routers- Its main job is to direct traffic in the network.
Firewalls- This restricts the traffic coming into the network.
Gateways- With the help of this networks that are operating by different protocols are getting connected.
Modems- The main work of this is the conversion of “digital signal” into “analogue signal”.
Network Software
There are different networking software that can be used for this purpose. These are the ones that will make the work of the travel agency more easy (Ahad et al.2020). The description of this software is as follows.
Airbnb- This is a software that will help connect with the employees of different offices of this company. It is to be noted that with the help of this proper communication between these employees can be maintained.
SAP Concur- This is a platform with the help of which it becomes easy for customers to book tickets online.
Server type, selection
It is to be noted that there is a particular type of server is going to be used for this company. The server that is best suitable for this company is the Email server. This form of server mainly utilizes email communication. It is observed that most of the work of the travel agency is carried out through emails. So, this should be the medium that should be focused on the most. Also, the security of email communication is essential for a travel company (Pan et al.2019). For this reason, it becomes very important that this server is used in this company.
Range of Server Types
There are various types of cloud servers/ local servers used by different types of MNCs and Industries, which are given below.
File server- The main idea behind this is to store files. With the help of this, the users are enabled to access different files present on the server.
Email server- In this server, the main thing that is done is to maintain email communication. For a travel company email communication becomes very much important.
Web server- This is a server that mainly hosts websites.
Database server- The main work of this server is to manage the database of a company.
Workstations
It is to be noted that there are different hardware is required to be present in the workstation for proper networked communication. For this purpose, a NIC can be used. This is used in connecting networks. Also, with the use of this different workstations are getting connected. The data packets are transferred with the use of NIC (Van Zee et al.2020). It is to be noted that the speed of the network is one of the major requirements of companies. This speed is checked by NIC.
Cabling
This can be described as the connectors of networks. There are different forms of cabling that can be seen in the actual practice. These are as follows.
Coaxial cable- This is an older form of cable. This is mainly used in TV networks.
Twisted pair cables- This is a form of cable where two cables are twisted together making a pair of wires. This is mainly used as cables of Ethernet.
Fiber optic- This transmits data in the form of light rays. It uses the principle of total internal reflection.
Figure 5: Diagram Of Computer Network
Efficient Utilization of a Network System
As a travel agency expands to its larger office, an appropriate network topology is a wired hierarchical design. This provides the performance and reliability needed for business operations while remaining cost-effective. The topology should consist of an access layer with switches for device connections, a distribution layer to aggregate wiring, and a core layer with high-speed routing.
The access layer uses Ethernet to connect employee computers, phones, printers, etc. The distribution layer links access switches to the core, paired traffic across trunk lines. The core delivers high-speed packet switching between circulation nodes (Lai et al.2022). However, a hierarchical wired approach is reliable and can handle the bandwidth needs of multiple users and systems. It also offers security, separating access from the core. Expanding the network will require new cabling and switches. However, a wired topology avoids the possible interference and latency of wireless. The wire affords consistent high speeds for office tasks like VoIP, customer databases, and Internet access.
For standards, gigabit Ethernet (802.3ab) should be used for device connections, providing 1Gbps speeds. The trunk links between layers can utilize 10 gigabit Ethernet (802.3ae) for backbone capacity and room to grow. The token ring (802.5) and wireless (802.11) aren't appropriate for an office environment where high performance and dependability are expected. The Ethernet-based networking can scale to meet the bandwidth and user growth needs. However, with proper network management, a hierarchical wired topology offers the right balance of cost, performance, and reliability for a growing travel agency's office network.
Figure 6: Network Technology | Advantages and Disadvantages
Comparison of Common Networking Principles and the Role of Protocols
Scalability refers to the ability of a network to expand in size and capacity. Protocols such as TCP and IP enable scalability through features like network addressing that work regardless of this scale.
Reliability involves proper maintaining of connectivity and consistent performance notwithstanding issues like node failures. However, the Protocols can provide reliability through error checking, acknowledgments, and retries.
Security means protecting the network resources and overall data from unauthorized access or misuse through encryption, access controls, and other protocol features.
Interoperability allows varied systems to communicate despite many differences in fundamental architectures. However, the Protocols promote interoperability by establishing common languages and rules (Thompson et al.2020). For example, TCP/IP allows Windows, Mac, Linux, and other systems to interoperate on the internet.
The network performance relates to the speed and capacity of a network. It plays a crucial role in ensuring proper communication. The Protocols are designed to maximize the amount by optimizing data formats, transmission, error handling, and other factors.
Proper utilization of the bandwidth is one of the very important and significant aspects of networking. The SNMP helps very efficiently by providing proper insights into this network.
Conclusion
The overall chapter includes various aspects of networking on the floor of a travel agency. As a network engineer the overall discussion, recommendations, and analysis are described in this overall report. The report includes the overall description and the purpose of the networks and the topologies. Also, some necessary protocols and designs that can be fit on the floor of a travel agency are added. However, the devices that are related to the network, such as software, server types, and workstations are discussed properly. A proper description of the utilization of the network regarding the plan of the travel agency is discussed in this report. However, this also includes various principles and protocols regarding this network system. Hence the networking connection and topology that are discussed above seem to be suited or fitted for the travel agency network planning.
References
Journal
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