INTRODUCTIONWANS (Wide area Networks) are multiple LANS (Local area Networks) spread across a geographical area, which will allow buildings to connect with each other, allowing information to be sent and received from one to another. (i.e., any telecommunications network that links across metropolitan, regional, national or international boundaries) using leased telecommunication lines. Business and government entities use WANs to relay data among employees, clients, buyers, and suppliers from various geographical locations. In essence, this mode of telecommunication allows a business to effectively carry out its daily function regardless of location. The Internet can be considered a WAN as well, and is used by businesses, governments, organizations, and individuals for almost any purpose imaginable.[1]

We are going to create a WAN infrastructure for the following local schools in Ballyfermot, Dublin 10,

Caritas College; (f)10 Drumfinn RoadDublin 10(01) 626 5927

St. Dominic's Secondary School; (b)Kylemore RoadBallyfermot, Dublin(01) 626 6493

Kylemore College; (e)Kylemore RoadDublin 10

St Gabriels National School; (c)Ballyfermot RdDublin(01) 626 5958

St. John's College, De La Salle; (a)10 Le Fanu RoadDublin(01) 626 4943

The headquarters for these schools are

Ballyfermot College of Further Education. (d) Ballyfermot RoadBallyfermot, Dublin 10(01) 626 9421

As you can see from google maps these are spread across a large area of the map-and we are to create a network which will connect all of these together using one of the viable WAN concepts available to us as you will witness further on in the project.

We will look at the following types of WAN technologies including,

Packet Switching Packet-switched describes the type of network in which relatively small units of data called packets are routed through a network based on the destination address contained within each packet.

Circuit Switching  Network such as the regular voice telephone network in which the communication circuit (path) for the call is set up and dedicated to the participants in that call. For the duration of the connection, all resources on that circuit are unavailable for other users.

Point to Point Links For large companies operating in a much larger scale in many areas, office to office transactions and communications could be much critical but the Point to Point WAN technology is the best solution for this dilemma. In fact, a lot of business owners now consider this technology to enhance company communications and delivery of basic transactions between their branches anywhere in the country.

The Implementation of WANWhen designing a Wan you need to take into consideration all the viable routes, this being said there are multiple to choose from.Each has various pros and cons which make each one unique i.e

Frame Relay "Frame relay has a lot of advantages for data only usage--cost savings, ease of connectivity, the ability to attach multiple devices to a single frame stream,

prioritization of traffic, congestion management. But it's a data-only situation still.

MPLSAllows for inter-connectivity growth of your network with minimal addition of hardware. An MPLS network uses communications via a cloud based network with each node connecting to the network providers MPLS cloud. One potential drawback of MPLS is the carrier has to play a role in configuration of the overall network. If you are using static routing on your network your provider will be responsible for the routing of data within their MPLS cloud.

PPP (Point to Point) uses a CRC code in each frame header for error detection and can monitor link quality by testing the links before datagram transmissions take place also it has full duplex control. The negative is it is slower for sending packets with the constant CRC checks.

Virtual VPN Virtual private networks offer more flexibility for business partners to communicate over a secure connection. A VPN will also create more ease of communication with remote workers and enable them to check in at the office without sacrificing security. The downside is the use of mobile devices to initiate connectivity to the virtual private network can cause security issues especially if the connection is wireless. For this reason, an added solution is sometimes needed to tighten up security when logging on to the VPN with a mobile device.

WAN OF CHOICEI have chosen to implement MPLS to connect all sites to one another, Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) has been a huge success with the major service providers due to its ability to provide the guaranteed QOS, flexibility, and VPNs needed for supporting both large and small enterprises.

Evaluating the merits of a given approach should be based on, but not necessarily restricted to, the following aspects of the approach:

Type of traffic supported VPN connectivity scenarios that could be offered to the customer using

this approach Scalability Deployment complexity Service provisioning complexity Complexity of management and troubleshooting Deployment cost Management and maintenance costs

Possible Connectivity ScenariosSeveral connectivity scenarios for customer sites could be implemented using both approaches. Both approaches could be used to implement the following connectivity scenarios:

        Point-to-Point.        Hub and Spoke.        Partial Mesh.        Full Mesh.        Overlapping VPNs.

I have decided that full mesh scenario would be the best step i.e

Fully Meshed Topology

In a fully meshed topology, each routing node on the periphery of a given packet-switching network has a direct path to every other node on the cloud. The key rationale for creating a fully meshed environment is to provide a high level of redundancy. It is not viable in large packet-switched networks. The following are key issues for a fully meshed topology:

A large number of virtual circuits are required (one for every connection between routers).

Problems are associated with the requirement for large numbers of packet and broadcast replications.

Configuration is complex for routers without routing protocol multicast support in nonbroadcast environments.

 WAN Backup Strategy Design

WAN links are relatively unreliable compared to LAN links, and often are much slower than the LANs that they connect. The combination of uncertain reliability, lack of speed, and high importance makes the WAN link a good candidate for redundancy.

Each enterprise edge solution requires a WAN backup to provide high availability between sites. Branch offices should experience minimum downtime in the event of primary link failure. Backup connections can be established using either dialup or permanent connections.

The primary WAN backup options are as follows:

Dial backup routing:

Dial backup routing uses dialup services such as ISDN. The switched circuit provides the backup service for another type of circuit, such as point-to-point or Frame Relay. The router initiates the dial backup line based on object tracking parameters or when a failure is detected on the primary circuit. The dial backup line provides WAN connectivity until the primary circuit is restored and then terminates.

Permanent secondary WAN link:

The deployment of an additional permanent WAN link between each remote office and the central office (CO) makes the network more fault-tolerant. This capability offers two advantages:

Backup link:

If a connection between any remote office and the CO fails, the backup link is used. The Reliable Static Routing Backup Using Object Tracking feature can ensure reliable backup in the case of several catastrophic events. If the connection to the main office is lost, the status of the tracked object changes from up to down. When the state of the tracked object changes to down, the routing table entry for the primary interface is removed. Traffic is then forwarded to the preconfigured destination from the secondary interface. This ability allows applications to proceed in the event of a WAN link failure and thus improves application availability.

Increased bandwidth:

This additional bandwidth decreases response times when the router connected supports load balancing between two parallel links of equal cost. In this case, load balancing is performed automatically through routing protocol.

IPsec:

Using an IPsec VPN, the WAN traffic can be directed back to the corporate headquarters through the Internet when a failure is detected.

IMPLEMENTATIONAll schools and Headquarters will be connected together through the MPLS as for the internet, all traffic will be sent to the Ballyfermot College of further education headquarters, so it can filter the traffic and only allow various sites to be viewed as well as become blocked. This will allow the Administration office to monitor and be in complete control of the college network from one building.

Service provider

Data networking is an integral part of every business operating today. The business needs to know that the people who manage the service are capable

of delivering to the highest standards. At UPC Business, UPC have been operating in the Irish market for over a decade and with a growing client base year-on-year, they have proven time and again that they can cater to every client’s specific networking requirement.

Wide Area Network (WAN) Solutions 

High bandwidth available on uncontended service. A state of the art network that engineers traffic flow to maximize availability, bandwidth and service delivery.

 

 

Overview

Transparent layer 2 connectivity across metropolitan areas as a standard product

Dedicated 100Mb to 10G bandwidth available delivered on minimum of a GigE port

Delivered on UPC Business owned fibre from door-to-door

Point-to-point and point-to-multpoint services available

Presence in all data centres and carrier hotels

Fibre networks in Dublin, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Cork

Support is always available with locally based support engineers

Benefits The Metro Ethernet network has recently been upgraded to reach to every corner of the business community in Ireland’s Metro regions. With our extensive fibre reach we can deliver point-to-point or point-to-multipoint services with short lead times.

Setting Up Network with ISP WAN and Public IP Block subnets running NAT

In dedicated Internet connection (i.e. T1/E1 or DS3/E3) and some xDSL plans, you may receive two different subnets from your ISP. One is for the WAN connection between your network and ISP, typically the WAN subnet is in the form of /30 network since the circuit you have is point-to-point type.

Another subnet you receive from ISP is your Public IP Block. This block could be in the form of /29, /28, or /27 network; depending on which plan or subnet you choose to have. There will be a router that connects to your ISP. This router has two Layer-3 interfaces. One interface should face your ISP and another interface should face your network. You plan to have a Private network that uses Private IP addresses (i.e. 10.0.0.0/24, 172.16.1.0/24, or 192.168.4.0/24). Therefore there must be NAT/PAT in place within your network between the Private IP addresses and the Public IP Block assigned by your ISP.

NAT is situated only on routers to convert a public address into a private address. If you have loads of ip addresses on the the LAN side of the network, which are private to free up space and keep costs down and it will convert/translate it to a public ip address for the WAN to communicate with other locations on a geographical map.

Network BreakdownAs you can see, I have broken down the private network for various locations including WAN Links between them for the the MPLS and another for the Internet

Major Network: 192.168.0.0/18Available IP addresses in major network: 16382

Number of IP addresses needed: 10514Available IP addresses in allocated subnets: 12290

About 75% of available major network address space is usedAbout 86% of subnetted network address space is used

Subnet Name Needed Size

Allocated Size

Address Mask Dec Mask Assignable Range Broadcast

A Ballyfermot college of further education

1750 2046 192.168.0.0 /21 255.255.248.0 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.7.254

192.168.7.255

B Caritas college 1750 2046 192.168.8.0 /21 255.255.248.0 192.168.8.1 - 192.168.15.254

192.168.15.255

C st dominics secondary school

1750 2046 192.168.16.0 /21 255.255.248.0 192.168.16.1 - 192.168.23.254

192.168.23.255

D Kylemore college 1750 2046 192.168.24.0 /21 255.255.248.0 192.168.24.1 - 192.168.31.254

192.168.31.255

E St Gabriels national school 1750 2046 192.168.32.0 /21 255.255.248.0 192.168.32.1 - 192.168.39.254

192.168.39.255

F st Johns college de la salle 1750 2046 192.168.40.0 /21 255.255.248.0 192.168.40.1 - 192.168.47.254

192.168.47.255

G WAN 1 2 2 192.168.48.0 /30 255.255.255.252 192.168.48.1 - 192.168.48.2

192.168.48.3

H WAN 2 2 2 192.168.48.4 /30 255.255.255.252 192.168.48.5 - 192.168.48.6

192.168.48.7

I WAN 3 2 2 192.168.48.8 /30 255.255.255.252 192.168.48.9 - 192.168.48.10

192.168.48.11

J WAN 4 2 2 192.168.48.12 /30 255.255.255.252 192.168.48.13 - 192.168.48.14

192.168.48.15

K WAN 5 2 2 192.168.48.16 /30 255.255.255.252 192.168.48.17 - 192.168.48.18

192.168.48.19

L WAN 6 2 2 192.168.48.20 /30 255.255.255.252 192.168.48.21 - 192.168.48.22

192.168.48.23

M WAN 7 2 2 192.168.48.24 /30 255.255.255.252 192.168.48.25 - 192.168.48.26

192.168.48.27

LAN DesignThe local area networks infrastructure which is located at each sites core area will have:

Computers

Wireless Access points

Switches

Router

Server

Firewall FilterAnd Internet access. All internet access will be provided through the Ballyfermot college Headquarters- So as it can monitor all activity and have various sites blocked by the firewall in which they feel are necessary for day to day development in the schools environment.

Summary

All branch offices use either Cisco 2911 series ISRs. You will be updating these routers in several locations. Each branch has its own ISP requirements to consider.

To update the devices, focus on the following WAN modules access types:

Ethernet Broadband T1/E1 and ISDN PRI BRI Serial T1 and E1 trunk voice and WAN Wireless LANs and WANs

A business can use private lines or the public network infrastructure for WAN connections. A public infrastructure connection can be a cost-effective alternative to a private connection between LANs, as long as security is also planned.

There is common terminology used to identify the physical components of WAN connections and who, the service provider or the customer, is responsible for which components.

Service provider networks are complex and the service provider’s backbone networks consist primarily of high-bandwidth fiber-optic media. The device

used for interconnection to a customer is specific to the WAN technology that is implemented.

Permanent, dedicated, point-to-point connections are provided by using leased lines. Dialup access, although slow, is still viable for remote areas with limited WAN options. Other private connection options include ISDN, Frame Relay, ATM, Ethernet WAN, MPLS, and VSAT.

Public infrastructure connections include DSL, cable, wireless, and 3G/4G cellular. Security over public infrastructure connections can be provided by using remote-access or site-to-site virtual private networks (VPNs).