ElectroMyCycle Network Topology Solution

Submitted By Srinivasa Kanchinatham

Submitted To Professor Dr. Abdel Ismail, PhD MIS
CIS 532: Network Architecture and Analysis
August 28th, 2012

Problem:
ElectroMyCycle is a manufacturer of new electric motorcycles. ElectroMycycle has chosen you
to design a new network that will let the company scale to larger scale. The campus network will
support about 200 employees and a new data center. Another feature of the campus network will
be a state of art manufacturing facility with networked equipment that communicates with
servers in the data center that support real-time control and management. Engineers will access
the servers from their PCs in the access layer of the campus network. ElectroMyCycle will sell
its new motorcycle both online and through a large retail company. For online sales,
ElectroMyCycle plans to have a DMZ that connects a public web server, a DNS server, and an
email server. The web server needs to communicate with back-end servers in the data center that
hold customer billing data. ElectroMyCycle also plans to open a branch sales office in the city
where the retail company's corporate headquarters reside, about 500 miles from
ElectroMyCycle's headquarters.
Design and draw a logical topology that will support ElectroMyCycle's needs. In addition to
meeting the specified needs, be sure to consider security.
Logical Network topology:
The logical topology of the network is shown in the form of three diagrams. First figure shows
how the LAN and DMZ are connected to the internet. The second figure shows the three layers
(core, distribution and access) of ElectroMyCycle Companys LAN (SemSim.com, 2012). The

third figure throws light on the T-1 link present between ElectroMyCycle Companys
headquarters and their branch sales office (500 miles away from the HQ).

Figure-1: Diagram showing how the LAN, DMZ are connected to the internet.
It can be seen that the DMZ is separated from the LAN which contains the workstations,
Manufacturing facility and the data center. However, a link (shown in brown) has been provided
from the Webserver (DMZ) to the data center (LAN). This is present because the data backup of
webserver is present on the data center servers.

Figure-2: Diagram showing the three layers of ElectroMyCycle Companys LAN.

In this figure, it is clear that the LAN of ElectroMyCycle Company has been logically divided
into three layers core distribution and access (SemSim.com, 2012). Core layer contains the
router that connects the LAN to ISP and DMZ and the switch via which the connection gets
distributed in the LAN.
The PCs shown in the figure shows the facility where in 200 employees will be accommodated
(including the engineers).

Figure-3: This shows how a connection is made between the Headquarters and the branch
sales office.
As shown in the diagram, either a T-1 link can be used (howstuffworks, 2012) or a Metro
Ethernet virtual link can be used to connect both the facilities.
1. Explain why you think your design meets the needs of ElectroMyCycle.
The network design as demonstrated by the logical topology of previous section makes sure that
following company needs are satisfied:

The network has a support for the 200 employees of the company (through its access
layer switches and PCs). Also, the data center has been included in the access layer, to

ensure its connectivity to the LAN.

Manufacturing facility and the Data center are connected via a router. Therefore,
manufacturing equipments can be successfully controlled and managed via

communication with data center servers.

As a web server has been setup at the DMZ, online sales have become possible.
Therefore, companys requirement of being able to sell online has been fulfilled.

A DMZ containing web server, mail server and a DNS server has been created. As it can
be seen, the DMZ is separated from the LAN through a router that connects to the ISP too

(techrepublic, 2005).
A firewall has been setup to provide a secure network (Tyson, 2012). Also, distribution
level routers make sure that other security features like VLANs (Varadarajan, 1997); port

security etc can be configured.

A metro Ethernet segment can be set-up between the DMZ router and the remote branch
sales office. This provides connectivity to the data center and thus, employees can have
access to companys operational data which will be needed for the smooth running of the
sales office.

2. List the major user communities for your design

Major user communities:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)

Engineers
Network Administrators
Other employees
Online customers
Internal email users
Data center admins

NOTE: It is not compulsory that a single user cannot fall in more than one user community.
3. List the major data stores and the user communities for each data store
Following are the major data stores with its users description:
1) Data center servers: The data here will be used by customers (via web application),
network admins, data center admins, engineers, etc.
2) Email server: This will contain a database that will support the internal email system of
the company. All the employees will be its users.

3) DNS server: it will have a mapping of the domain names and the network addresses. It
will again be used by the employees of the company.
4) Routers: The routers will contain the routing table and thus a picture of the entire network
topology will be present on them. This data will be used by all the stakeholders
involuntarily.
4. Identify major network traffic flows in your network topology drawing
The network Topology of ElectroMycycle has been drawn above. It is pretty evident that the data
center is the major storage of all kinds of data, be it for the web server, or for the manufacturing
facility equipments. Apart from the data center access, another major activity that will happen on
the network is the web server access. Also, workstations of 200 employees will run applications
that will create some network traffic. Therefore, listed below are the major network traffic flows:
1) The internet will send in a lot of traffic to the DMZ (webserver). As the company plans to
have an online medium of sale too, a lot of customers are expected to access the web
servers and order their units.
2) The employees and engineers will run applications like the email client, companys
website, and other internal applications with data storage in the data center. Therefore,
another major traffic flow will exist between Workstations (PCs) and DMZ (Email server,
Webserver and even DNS server) and also between Workstations and the data center.
3) Manufacturing facility has networked equipments that communicate with data servers.
Therefore, a lot of traffic flow is expected between data center and the manufacturing
facility.
4) The webserver has its data backup o the servers at the data center, therefore DMZ
(webserver) and the data center will also have a lot of traffic amongst them.

5. How does your design provide security for ElectroMyCycle's network?

As it can be seen in the network topology, security has been implemented at various stages. First
and foremost, a firewall is present which separates the DMZ and the LAN from the internet. This
helps in filtering malicious and unnecessary network traffic (Tyson, 2012).
Then comes the VLAN support. As it can be seen that distribution layer router is present that
connects all the switches of the workstations (where the PCs are present). This distribution router
ensures that the different PCs can be separated in the form of Virtual LANs. VLAN is a way to
create a logical separation for different departments, user communities etc. It helps in preventing
unauthorized access and helps in departmental information security.
The switches present at the access layer can help in providing port level security. The ports can
be configured to provide a security circle that protects the network from unauthorized access
cases.
Security breaches are also easier to track and manage. It is because of the layered topology
where in core, distribution and access layers are separated in the network. Layered network
segments help in easy organization and maintenance.
6. What questions will you ask ElectroMyCycle about this project as you do your work?
Details pertaining to following questions can be asked while working on the project:
1) What are the different VLANs that need to be configured on the network of
ElectroMotorcycle.

2) Are there any particular sites that you would like to block? Or what sort of traffic do you
want to allow from the internet.
3) What are the different accesses that you would like to implement? All users might not be
intended t allow access to all kinds of data. Which data community should be given
access to what data?

References:
howstuffworks. (2012). How does a T1 line work? Retrieved from computer.howstuffworks.com:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question372.htm
SemSim.com. (2012). The Cisco Three-Layered Hierarchical Model. Retrieved from
http://www.mcmcse.com/cisco/guides/hierarchical_model.shtml
techrepublic. (2005). SolutionBase: Strengthen network defenses by using a DMZ. Retrieved
from http://www.techrepublic.com/article/solutionbase-strengthen-network-defenses-by-using-admz/5756029
Tyson, J. (2012). How Firewalls Work. Retrieved from
http://www.howstuffworks.com/firewall.htm
Varadarajan, S. (1997). Virtual Local Area Networks. Retrieved from
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~jain/cis788-97/ftp/virtual_lans/index.htm