IT 640 Milestone Three

As SNHUEnergy Inc. is gearing up for tremendous growth in its operations, there is a need to conduct a thorough assessment of the existing network architecture to accommodate and support the operations in the future. The current operating environment at the company primarily focuses on the Dallas and Memphis offices. However, the existing infrastructure has severe issues in scalability, reliability and security. With the expected increase in the number of employees by 50% within the span of two years, increased hundreds of new devices, and new establishment offices in Kansas City and Houston, the interconnection must be upgraded to support the interactions and smooth running of the work: IT 640 Milestone Three.

The existing hub and spoke infrastructure, which is dependent on the Dallas location, has known weaknesses; therefore, performance enhancement and failure contenting measures will require the implementation of a meshed topology. Stabilizing issues such as inadequate firewall coverage and lack of internal geographical divisions for networks have to be dealt with in order to protect crucial information. The main objective of this project is to devise a design for a network architecture that is robust, flexible, and secure enough to cater to the growth and technological needs of SNUHEnergy Inc.

Future Communication Needs

As SNHUEnergy prepares for massive growth, its network infrastructure must evolve to meet future communication needs. The company expects 50 percent employee growth over the next two years and hundreds of new devices to be thrown on the network. Two new regional offices in Kansas City and Houston will be added to existing branches in Dallas and Memphis, doubling the demand for strong inter-office communication. This growth requires a highly scalable and efficient network to process greater amounts of traffic, more data, and better security.

Scalability: With an estimated 50% growth in staff and hundreds of new devices during the next two years, the network will need to keep up with that demand without major upgrades. This capacity means that future growth, such as opening offices in Kansas City and Houston, will be efficiently managed.

Reliability: Continuous communication is important for the smooth functioning of business. Low-latency connections are also needed for time-sensitive applications like VoIP and video conferencing, which are vital to collaboration across geographically distributed teams. Network performance directly impacts business productivity and reliability.

Security: Secure data such as payroll, bills, and operations is important. The network should also include robust security features like encryption, network segmentation and sophisticated authentication to protect against the attacks. Security builds confidence and industry standards compliance.

The most critical communication requirements include instantaneous data transmission, secure connection to central applications, and bandwidth-heavy services like video conferencing and VoIP. These are important services that support effective communication and collaboration between geographically distributed teams. The network needs to be able to support higher loads with low latency so that critical applications run without downtime or loss of quality. Scalability is particularly important since the infrastructure will have to handle future employee and device increases without large-scale refactoring.

Security is also a high priority in SNHUEnergy’s expanding network. Payroll, billing, operational records, and other sensitive information need to be safeguarded from external hackers and internal hacks.

Network Architecture

The network architecture must be completely re-engineered to meet SNHUEnergy’s future requirements. The current hub-and-spoke architecture—where all traffic flows through the Dallas office—is not enough to accommodate the expected expansion. This model results in bottlenecks and increased dependence on the Dallas office for all inter-office communications.

The solution is to migrate to a meshed network topology. In this layout, all offices are connected, so messages can be exchanged directly between the regional offices without having to go through Dallas. It effectively reduces the latency and removes bottlenecks so data can be transmitted much faster and efficiently (Al-Khateeb et al., 2010).

The plan for the future network topologies involves replacing the hub and spoke model with a fully connected mesh, which would allow every site, including Dallas, Memphis, Kansas City, and Houston, to communicate with each other directly. Both sites will have dedicated ISPs to encourage reliability since the system is less dependent on a single ISP in case of failure. The meshed WAN links will incorporate encrypted VPN links to ensure secure and private inter-office communication. There will be Quality of Service (QoS) protection for important traffic like VoIP and video conferencing, which guarantees good quality while usage is high.

Further, the architecture makes use of network segmentation to keep the integral activities of the system, such as billing, away from normal traffic in an attempt to increase security. The applications will, for the most part, continue to ‘reside’ within these places, but the adoption of cloud solutions selectively will enhance the reach as well as the dependence on bricks and mortar. This design makes it possible to scale up, be reliable and perform to the increasing communication needs of SNHUEnergy as it expands.

Redundancy is part of the design. Each office, Dallas, Memphis, Kansas City, and Houston, will have two routers and switches. Redundancy ensures the downtime of network operations when one hardware component breaks down. Memphis, for instance, has only one router and switch and thus can experience full network outages if hardware fails. When the infrastructure is redundant, the potential for interruption in service is eliminated, and the system becomes more reliable and fault-tolerant.

Security is another important component of the new architecture. Only the Dallas office is currently connected to a firewall, and the rest of the campus is potentially vulnerable to cyber attacks. The proposed structure has dedicated firewalls for every single location to make sure that each office will be protected against intruders and threats (Furdek et al., 2016). Also, network segmentation will quarantine traffic by function so that no one will get to sensitive data. Billing processes can be isolated from general worker traffic, for example, so that financial data can be safely kept.

Interoffice communication will be encrypted by the installation of a virtual private network. VPNs encode all information sent between offices so it cannot be intercepted or any personal information is lost. Further security will include multifactor authentication (MFA) for critical systems (Peng et al., 2021). This will also offer a layer of security against unauthorized access.

Performance optimization will be achieved by using QoS mechanisms. QoS prioritizes critical traffic (VoIP, videoconferencing) above the rest (Liu & Song 2020) . This makes sure that important communication remains undistorted and continuous even when the network is heavily accessed. With these enhancements, the proposed system offers SNHUEnergy a scalable, secure, high-performance network that will be able to scale with it (Mukherjee et al., 2014).

Future Visual Representation

The proposed network infrastructure can be conceptualized as a robust and connected system to help drive SNHUEnergy’s business objectives. Here is a textual depiction of the new network:

Key:

• Each location has dual routers and switches for redundancy.
• Firewalls secure each office.
• VPN connections encrypt inter-office communications.
• Meshed topology reduces bottlenecks.
• QoS prioritizes high-priority traffic for optimal performance.

This design makes it easy to scale up, increases security, and makes the network more reliable to support SNHUEnergy’s growth strategies.

References

Al-Khateeb, W., Al-Irhayim, S., & Al-Khateeb, K. (2010). Reliability enhancement of complex networks through redundancy scaling. In International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering (ICCCE’10) (pp. 1–6). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCCE.2010.5556788

Borgianni, L., Adami, D., Giordano, S., & Pagano, M. (2024). Enhancing reliability in rural networks using a software-defined wide area network. Computers, 13(5), 113. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13050113

Furdek, M., Wosinska, L., Goścień, R., Manousakis, K., Aibin, M., Walkowiak, K., & Marzo, J. L. (2016, September). An overview of security challenges in communication networks. In 2016 8th International Workshop on Resilient Networks Design and Modeling (RNDM) (pp. 43-50). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/RNDM.2016.7608266

Liu, W., & Song, Z. (2020). Review of studies on the resilience of urban critical infrastructure networks. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 193, 106617. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2019.106617

Mukherjee, A., Fakoorian, S. A. A., Huang, J., & Swindlehurst, A. L. (2014). Principles of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks: A survey. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 16(3), 1550–1573. https://doi.org/10.1109/SURV.2014.012314.00178

Peng, P., Snyder, L. V., Lim, A., & Liu, Z. (2011). Reliable logistics networks design with facility disruptions. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 45(8), 1190-1211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trb.2011.05.022

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IT 640 Milestone Three Guidelines and Rubric

Overview

When you plan your network infrastructure, you must clarify or determine the key elements because the network’s logical infrastructure makes it possible for computers to communicate using the routes defined in the physical network topology. For the final milestone, you will provide a detailed recommendation of components that are able to meet the future communication needs of SNHUEnergy, Inc.

Prompt

In this section, you will provide a future recommendation based on the information presented. In addition, analyze the information provided in the Final Project Scenario document to develop a visual representation of your recommended network architecture in a network diagram.

Refer to the following files when completing this milestone:
Organizational Network Diagram – Current
Dallas Office Network Diagram – Current
Memphis Office Network Diagram – Current

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

A. Future Communication Needs: Summarize the future communication needs of the organization.
B. Network Architecture: Describe in detail a network architecture that would be appropriate for supporting the ultimate growth of the organization and defend how the future network would improve communication across the company.

C. Future Visual Representation: Develop a visual representation of your recommended network architecture by creating a network diagram.
Use the provided physical network design example as a guide for creating your diagram.

What to Submit
Review each critical element, and use each critical element as a bold subheading to organize your review of the current network architecture. Include an introduction for this assignment that aligns with your analysis from the first milestone. Your submission should align to the current APA standards. Submit your finalized network configuration as a network diagram. You will submit two files for this milestone.