ICT120 Computer Networks Assessment Task 2

Assessment and Submission Details

Marks 40% of the total assessment for the course

Submission details

Please submit this assignment on Canvas as a single MS Word document (.docx). All assignments will be checked for plagiarism and/or collusion between individuals. Refer to your course outline on the course Canvas site for a copy of the “Student Misconduct, Plagiarism and Collusion” guidelines.

Refer to the assignment rubric on Canvas for the marking criteria and standards. The assignment will be marked out of a total of 100 marks.

Note: Each student MUST retain a copy of their assignment, and this copy MUST be produced within 24 hours of it being requested by the Course Coordinator. Failure to produce the second copy of the assignment when requested may result in loss of marks or a fail grade for the assignment.

Requests for an extension to an assignment MUST be made to the Course Coordinator prior to the due date. Requests made on or after the due date will only be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Background

Sippy Tech is a specialised service provider to Australian customers. The company has its Head Office on the Sunshine Coast which occupies three floors in a building, hosting about 15 employees at each floor from a business department, including Administration, Sales and Support. In addition, it has a Production office in Moreton Bay hosting a team of 10 local employees in a leased office. Every employee is assigned a desktop computer, and there are about 10 laptops available for hire in the Head Office. The Sippy Tech senior management team expect the company to grow rapidly, forcing the company to form two new departments (20 employees each) and thus leasing two floors in a building in Brisbane.

The company also runs five (5) servers in its Head Office. Three (3) of them run services to support various internal business functions, including file sharing, job tracking and payroll. All staff frequently need to visit these servers during their daily work. The other two (2) server host the website and online sales platforms, which are open to the public and customers.

Your task is to help in designing a network for Sippy Tech which meets their current and foreseeable future needs. The aim is to enable easy and efficient connections between all devices, offices, staff, and customers.

Network Needs Analysis

Each department at each location should maintain an individual network, while all the departments should be able to communicate with each other, and the internal servers, and access the Internet.

Private IPv4 addresses are to be used for the internal networks. To simplify the discussion, all subnets should be within the private network address range of 10.0.0.0/8 range. For each subnet, the first available IP address is to be allocated to its default gateway. To avoid wastage of IP addresses, the size of each subnet need to be based on number of IP addresses required with a small number of IP addresses for expansion.

Sippy Tech deploys a border router at each office location (Sunshine-R and Moreton-R, and Brisbane-R for the forthcoming location) which are connected to their ISP’s router (ISP-R). In response to Sippy Tech’s inquiries regarding their IPv4 needs, their ISP has advised that they can continue using their current block of public IPv4 addresses, that is 190.191.192.0/26.

Assignment Requirements and Deliverables

You are a member of the network planning team and need to write a technical report to explain your solutions and recommendations about the network plan for Sippy Tech as per the above requirements. Specifically, you should discuss possible solutions for the following 3 topics in your report.

In addition to specialist audience, your target audience includes executive managers who have extensive business experience but limited ICT knowledge. Therefore, besides the technical design of the network, the report must explain and justify why the recommended networking technologies/solutions are the most appropriate and how they will benefit Sippy Tech. You may need to compare your recommendations with other available technologies.

Topic 1: Network topology design

Use the aforementioned information to design the network for Sippy Tech. Please describe the topology of your solution with the discussion on the recommended devices and types of cables. It should be noted that the managers hope to have devices isolated at each department because they have different roles.

Include a screenshot of the topology of your network design in your report. To illustrate your design, draw the topology using Cisco Packet Tracer and show all network and end device addresses for subnets, routers, servers, and PCs (only one PC per subnet) on the topology – see Topic 2 below.

Note: The topology does not need to be configured in Cisco Packet Tracer. Only screenshot is needed and must be included in the report.

Topic 2: IP addressing plan

Please provide a detailed description and calculations of IP address allocations for the recommended network topology and subnets. Note that the size of subnets should be precisely calculated so as not to waste IP addresses where possible. Show all your workings for subnetting in an appendix.

Based on your network design, use the following tables to report the required setups for subnetting and addressing.

Table 1: Subnetting Table (to be used for all the organisation’s internal and external subnets)

Note: add more rows if needed

Table 2: IP Addressing Table

~Routers, Servers and PCs (include only one PC per subnet and assign the last available IP address of each respective subnet to the PC)
*Can be NIC, Serial, FastEthernet, etc.
^ Use N/A for routers.
Note: add more rows if needed

Topic 3: Essential network services

You also need to recommend some key network related services by addressing the following requirements:

1. Access control is required to disable/block unwanted inbound/outbound traffic and potential network attacks. Please discuss a viable solution, including how to deploy it and how it works
2. Staff will be allowed to work from home with their own computers and have access to all company network resources as if they were in the office. Please discuss how a viable work from home solution can be enabled and how it can benefit the business.

Report Format

The assignment will be assessed according to the marking rubric which is viewable in the submission area on CANVAS.

Your report should be no less than 1,500 words and it would be best to be no longer than 2,500 words long.

A formal technical report usually contains many different sections. The following outline is recommended for this assignment:

• Title page
• Summary
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Network topology design
• IP addressing plan
• Essential network services
• Conclusion
• References

The report MUST be formatted using the following guidelines:

• Paragraph text – 11-point Calibri single line spacing
• Headings – Arial in an appropriate type size
• Margins – 2.5cm on all margins
• Header – Report title
• Footer – page number (including the word “Page”)
• Page numbering – roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv) up to and including the Table of Contents, restart numbering using conventional numerals (1, 2, 3, 4) from the first page after the Table of Contents
• Title Page – Must not contain headers or footers. Include your name as the report’s author.

• The report is to be created as a single Microsoft Word document. No other format is acceptable and doing so will result in the deduction of marks.

Refer to the following references for details on report structures:
Summers, J. & Smith, B., 2014, Communication Skills Handbook, 4th Ed, Wiley, Australia.

Referencing

The report is to include (at least 5) appropriate references and these references should follow a standard method of referencing, e.g., Numbered, Harvard, etc. Note that ALL references should be from journal articles, conference papers, technical papers, recognized experts in the field or vendors’ and service provider’s websites. The use of unqualified references will result in the deduction of marks.

Assignment Return and Release of Grades

Assignment grades will be available on the Canvas in two weeks after the submission deadline. Details of marking will also be accessible via online rubrics on Canvas. Where an assignment is undergoing investigation for alleged plagiarism or collusion, the grade for the assignment and the assignment will be withheld until the investigation has concluded.

Assignment Advice

This assignment will take time to complete and will require a good understanding of computer networks for successful completion. It is imperative that students take heed of the following points in relation to doing this assignment:

Ensure that you clearly understand the requirements for the assignment – what must be done and what are the deliverables.

If you do not understand any of the assignment requirements – Please ASK the course coordinator or your tutor.

Each time you work on any aspect of the assignment reread the assignment requirements to ensure that what is required is clearly understood.

Plagiarism and Collusion Advice

1. All work must be submitted through Turnitin.
2. Turnitin will pick up any similarities between work online as well as work from other students (in this semester and previous).
3. Please make sure you reference your work properly. If you are using any material from the internet or any books from the library, you need to cite the work correctly. Failure to do so will result in possible cases of Academic Misconduct.
4. Please do not share your work with other students. Do not give anyone your files to have a look. Turnitin will pick up collusion, but keep in mind the percentages for Collusion may not report accurately until all student assignments have been submitted. Both the person copying and the person providing will potentially be held accountable.

Use of AI (conditional – AI Refined)

1. Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools is permitted to edit and refine your original work. Your original work, with no AI-generated content, must be provided as an appendix of the final submission.
2. The unauthorised use of artificial intelligence or paraphrasing tools can be a form of plagiarism, cheating, or academic fraud and result in academic misconduct.
3. If generative AI was used in the preparation of this assessment, please include the following information:
   • I acknowledge the use of <insert the name of the AI tool> in the refining of this assessment task.
   • I confirm that my original work with no AI content is submitted as an appendix item of the final submission.
4. Please refer to the UniSC Student Portal for information on Using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and the Library on How to acknowledge the use of artificial intelligence.

End of Task 2 Description