Riordan Manufacturing Pt 1

Riordan Manufacturing Pt 1

Riordan Manufacturing, Inc is a leader in the field of plastic injection molding. Riordan Manufacturing employs 550 people and growth is expected. It has plants in San Jose, California, Albany, Georgia, Pontiac, Michigan, and Hangzhou, China. Riordan Manufacturing specializes in plastic products. Some of the products they manufacture are plastic bottles, fans, heart valves, medical stents, and custom plastic parts. Riordan Manufacturing's research and development department is the industry leader in identifying industry trends as well as using polymer materials to provide solutions to their customers. Riordan determined that it is time to revamp their networks.

Characteristics and Components

Each of the networks is similar but at the same time different. In all of the buildings, the computers and servers are windows based except for the ERP/MRP servers, which are UNIX based. The windows based computers and servers are different versions of windows depending on which building they are in. All of the buildings use T1 256K to the outside networks. All of the buildings use Ethernet connections within the building, however, in Georgia, they use cat 5 cabling and in Michigan, they use cat 3 cabling. The buildings all have switches in the building to help with the in house networking. There are several brands and sizes of switches in use by the company. Riordan needs to streamline the network and have all buildings using the same hardware and configuration.

Network topology

The network topology used by Riordan is the tree topology. A tree topology is a hybrid of the bus topology and the star topology. "A bus topology is a type of network setup where each computer and network device is connected to a single cable or backbone" (Computer Hope, 2012). "A star topology is where each of the devices and computers on a network connect to a central hub" (Computer Hope, 2012). In the tree topology, multiple star networks connect to each other. The tree topology has qualities as well as flaws. For example, if the cable that connects the stars fails the stars cannot communicate, however the computers on the same star can still communicate. This is an acceptable topology for Riordan.

Network Standards

Network standards are rules that manufacturers follow to allow the user to connect technologies made by different manufacturers. For example, a customer buys a new router for their home network. They expect the cords to fit in their new router. Without standards, the cords probable would not fit unless the router was the exact same model. Many standards are applicable to Riordan's network. Some of these standards include hardware, software, internet, and network standards. The network standards include wide area network (WAN) standards. WANs use