Network Applications

Contents

Company’s Description        

Business and Technical Goals        

Network Applications        

Current Network        

Performance Analysis        

Feasibility Study        

Recommendation (Areas of concern)        

References        

Company’s Description

The University Of Distance Learning Malaysia (UDLM) is an organization that has approximately 1300 employees. UDLM consists of a Headquarters (HQ) and 4 branches in Nilai, Penang, Sabah, Sarawak, and Johor. The main business of UDLM is to provide distance learning for ICT, Engineering, Media Design, Mass Communication and Business courses. UDLM has been very successful. However, recently recurring problems with servers breaking downs affecting their quality of service has made a huge impact on their business. UDLM’s main source of business relies heavily on their servers and network performance. With students complaining of slow network access and the threat of them leaving, UDLM are in need of a solution to the network problem they are facing.

Business and Technical Goals

UDLM’s Business Goals

• To Improve Quality of Service
• Strengthen financial position
• To Grow in size.

Technical Goal

UDLM’s technical goal supports and helps achieve its business goal.

Scalability

To allow and support scalability. Currently, UDLM’s Headquarters is located in Kuala Lumpur. Its branches in Nilai, Penang, Sabah, Sarawak, Johor. UDLM’s network must be scalable and allow future expansion.

Availability

UDLM’s main service relies heavily on the availability of its network. This is especially true for headquarters as all traffic from the other branches are channelled through HQ. Therefore, it is vital that UDLM has high availability.

Performance

Performance refers to the speed of network, and overall performance of the network. UDLM’s performance must improve in order to maintain and increase in size.

To achieve Manageability and Security of networks.

Network Applications

Domain Controller - CentOS 7 Samba domain controller, Active Directory (AD) services/security policy enforcement

This will mainly be used for security, including the authentication of students accessing university resources. This service maintains the user/group database integrity that is called the Security Account Manager (SAM).

File/Printer Sharing- SMB Server

This allows allows file sharing capabilities between students/lecturers on the campus, sending files to print on any printer in the campus will become easier.

Domain/Client Setup- Windows Server 2016

SQL server- Microsoft SQL Server 2014

Database system will maintain information about students, instructors, and courses. A student entity has student ID sid as the identifier attribute, the name attribute, and the major attribute. An instructor entity has the instruction identification number iid as the identifier attribute, the name attribute, the title attribute, and the department dept. attribute. A course entity has course ID cid as the identifier attribute, the title attribute, the year attribute, the semester attribute, and the credits attribute.

Mail server- appleshare server 3

The University provides email accounts to faculty, staff, students, alumni, retired staff, affiliates, units, and student organizations, and tools for sending email to groups of subscribed and targeted individuals. It supports both a POP and IMAP interface which will be available 24 hours a day every day of the year except for scheduled down-time needed for the maintenance of hardware or software.

Web server- NGINX Plus R9

Firewall server- pfSense Firewall

pfSense® software is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD specifically tailored for use as a firewall and router that is entirely managed via web interface. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. This firewall service helps to protect and minimise the risk to University services and data from external malicious attack. The firewall is used to help enforce the University's connection and acceptable use policies. The firewall service is intended as a defensive mechanism and, while managing external access to legitimate University systems and services, access from within the University to external services will not be blocked

Current Network

For the current network system in the University of Distance Learning Malaysia (UDLM) show in the diagram above, in the current system is not using a hierarchical network and their current network infrastructure is not suitable and it cannot support the UDLM site. In the HQ that located in Kuala Lumpur, all the departments, labs, server room and library are contained in a 11 floor building, this is also the same for the branches which located in Johor Bharu, Penang, Nilai and Sarawak. All the connection for the horizontal and vertical network are using a CAT5e cable. Besides that, The HQ are also using 10mpg Ethernet departmental switch that are connected to the main switch with 100mbps. The HQ is also working with a 50 mbps ISP lease line. All the departments in HQ and branches are using Star topology to access to their network. The current ISP bandwidth is 50 mbps and it is obviously not enough to support for all the students as shown in network performance.