The Toy Factory Network Design

Executive Summary

The Toy Company has requested an upgrade of their network system. The current system has over ten old Windows 95 Operating System desktops with MS Office 95 products. The office employees use the network to send e-mail, access the Internet, make the payroll, accounting, scheduling receiving and delivering, invoicing, human resources tasks, and an outdated inventory System. The manufacturing side of the operation has a legacy network managing a classic robotics system. Every part of this system is obsolete, and the vendors went out of business, eliminating the possibility of support. The only IT person at the manufacturing facility may be an expert on keeping this old system running, but they do not have any experience with new technology. Needless to say, the system is slow and when a problem arise the downtime can go on for hours and sometimes even days at a time. The Toy Factory management wants to address these issues through an upgrade to their system, but they are also looking to positively affect productivity and improve security of the network overall.

The proposed network will require significant changes to The Toy Factory's systems. The current hardware is in dire need of an upgrade, which will be implemented with the new physical network architecture. The implementation of this new architecture will provide higher speeds, reliability, and easier maintenance of network (Dennis, 2009). The upgraded hardware will come with better software that will facilitate troubleshooting and maintenance as well as resolve the long down times that are currently happening. The new network will interconnect the management and the manufacturing facilities in Dallas, Texas with the distribution centers located in Los Angeles, California and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In addition, the proposed network will have some changes in its configuration. These changes not only will provide reliability and security for all users of The Toy Factory's network, it...