Assessment Details and Submission Guidelines

Unit Code MN621

Unit Title Advanced Network Design
Assessment Type An individual written report and group demonstration – Assignment 2
Assessment Title Network requirement analysis, plan and design
Purpose of the This assignment is designed to assess students’ knowledge and skills related to the
assessment (with following learning outcomes:
ULO Mapping) d. Apply concepts and theories of human factors as related to network design
and implementation;
e. Evaluate performance metrics and dimensions according to specifications.
Weight 15% of the total assessments
Total Marks 50
Word limit 1200 – 1500
Due Date Week 11, 31 May 2019 11:59 PM submit a report on Moodle, demonstration of the
design in Week 11 lab class.
Submission  All work must be submitted on Moodle by the due date along with a Title Page.
Guidelines  The assignment must be in MS Word format, 1.5 spacing, 11-pt Calibri (Body) font
and 2.54 cm margins on all four sides of your page with appropriate section
headings.
 Reference sources must be cited in the text of the report, and listed appropriately
at the end in a reference list using IEEE referencing style.
Extension  If an extension of time to submit work is required, a Special Consideration
Application must be submitted directly on AMS. You must submit this application
three working days prior to the due date of the assignment. Further information
is available at:
http://www.mit.edu.au/about-mit/institute-publications/policies-procedures-
and-guidelines/specialconsiderationdeferment
Academic  Academic Misconduct is a serious offence. Depending on the seriousness of the
Misconduct case, penalties can vary from a written warning or zero marks to exclusion from
the course or rescinding the degree. Students should make themselves familiar
with the full policy and procedure available at http://www.mit.edu.au/about-
mit/institute-publications/policies-procedures-and-guidelines/Plagiarism-
Academic-Misconduct-Policy-Procedure. For further information, please refer to
the Academic Integrity Section in your Unit Description.

Assignment Description
Prepared by: Dr Sanjeeb Shrestha Moderated by: Dr Ammar Alazab April, 2019
 MN621 Advanced Network Design Page |2

Project Scope: A case study for Barranquilla Plaza Hotel is considered. The link for the case study referring to
Barranquilla Plaza Hotel can be found in the Appendix.

The summary of the case study is that the hotel’s Wireless Access service was poor and had issues, such as
dropped connections, dead zones and insufficient capacity. A wireless solution was provided (refer to the case
study for further details) which was received very well by the customers. As a result, the overall experience of
the customers improved remarkably.

Provided 5 different departments of the hotel, guest rooms, multiple restaurants, pool area, reception area
and a bar, a generic network layout diagram of the hotel is presented below for illustrative purposes only.

Assignment Requirement: Provided the advantages of a layered approach (core, distribution and access), the
hotel considers redesigning its network adopting a layered approach. The new network design requirements
are a) three-layered network design (core, distribution and access) b) redundancy required in the core layer.

Gathering information about the existing network (such as IP addressing scheme, traffic restriction policies,
applications used etc.) is paramount for any network redesign for a seamless transition. In this regard, the
staff members and IT staffs can be invaluable sources of information. A carefully designed questionnaire can
be instrumental in gathering information.

Figure 1. Generic Network layout

Prepared by: Dr Sanjeeb Shrestha Moderated by: Dr Ammar Alazab April, 2019
 MN621 Advanced Network Design Page |3

Part I: Information collection

Develop a questionnaire to gather requirements from staff members, IT members and management. The
followings are to be covered in this section.
 What kinds of questions would you ask to understand their environment to each group of users
better?

 For the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, it is mandatory to acquire information about the
traffic types from the IT staffs and set the bandwidth requirement accordingly. Specifically, for the
new design, the followings criteria have to be satisfied.
For real-time traffic, bandwidth percentage should be set to 70 of the available bandwidth.
For FTP traffic, bandwidth should be set 200 kbps.
For SMTP traffic, bandwidth should be set to 800 kbps.

Note that traffic information is important and will be used for QoS. QoS reflects on the
performance evaluation of the design.

 How would you validate and verify the gathered information?

Part II: Network redesign and Demonstration

This is a network redesign and demonstration section. The following are to be covered.
 A three-layered network design (consisting of the Core, Distribution and Access) is needed.
 The new design must be the transformation of the existing design show in Figure 1 (i.e., IP
addressing, number of departments etc., should remain intact in the new design).

For demonstration, the format would be a) no more than 2 persons in a group, b) at least 3 viva voce
questions related to the design, and c) demo and viva voce duration 5 – 7 mins (at max). The following is to
be covered.
 Demonstration of a part of the design in Week 10 lab class (hardware platform)

Note to the lab tutor: As per the need, the lab tutor can allocate 15 mins in Week 9 and Week 10 for work
progression check and consultation.

Prepared by: Dr Sanjeeb Shrestha Moderated by: Dr Ammar Alazab April, 2019
 MN621 Advanced Network Design Page |4

Marking Guide:

Section to be included in the Description of the section Marks

report
Questionnaire preparation Are question prepared for: 10
Users
Management
IT staffs
Purpose of each question Are questions valid for gathering 10
the information from
stakeholders?
Validation and Verification plan Is there a plan to verify the 5
gathered requirements from
various stakeholders?
Network design with proper A clear network design (use 10
explanation and justification simulation software) and proper
labelling
Demonstration Demonstration of the part of the 10
network in a hardware platform
in the lab
 Work progression record
and consultation will be
on week 9 and 10 by the
lab tutor.
 Demonstration of a part
of the design in Week 11
lab (hardware platform)
Demonstration marks will be
awarded in regards to the stage
of the completion of the
demonstration and viva voce.

References Follow IEEE style referencing 5

Prepared by: Dr Sanjeeb Shrestha Moderated by: Dr Ammar Alazab April, 2019
 MN621 Advanced Network Design Page |5

Marking Rubric:

Grades HD D CR P Fail
80% and 70 - 79% 60 - 69% 50 - 59% <50%
above
Questionnaire Concise and Topics relevant Generally Some Not relevant to
prepared specific to the and soundly relevant and relevance and the assignment
(10) project analysed analysed briefly topic
presented
Questionnaire Demonstrated Demonstrated Demonstrated Demonstrated Did not
purpose excellent ability excellent ability an average an average demonstrate
(10) to think to think ability to think ability to think the ability to
critically and critically but critically and critically but think critically
sourced did not source sourced did not sourced and did not
reference material reference reference sourced
material appropriately material material reference
appropriately appropriately appropriately material
appropriately
Evaluation, Demonstrated Demonstrated Demonstrated Demonstrated Did not
i.e., validation excellent ability excellent ability an average an average demonstrate
and to think to think ability to think ability to think the ability to
verification of critically and critically but critically and critically but think critically
the sourced did not source sourced did not sourced and did not
questionnaire reference material reference reference sourced
(5) material appropriately material material reference
appropriately appropriately appropriately material
appropriately
Network All elements Components Components Most Lacks
design and its are present and present with presented and components components
applications very well good cohesion mostly well present and an and not
(10) integrated integrated average integrated well
integration
Demonstration Logic is clear Consistent logic Mostly Adequate The argument
(10) and easy to and convincing consistent logic cohesion and is confused
follow with convincing conviction and disjointed
strong
arguments
IEEE Reference Clear styles Clear Generally good Sometimes Lacks
style with an referencing referencing clear consistency
(5) excellent style style referencing with many
source of style errors
references

Appendix
https://static.tp-link.com/TP-Link_CS_Barranquilla_Auranet_1482298481639y.pdf

Prepared by: Dr Sanjeeb Shrestha Moderated by: Dr Ammar Alazab April, 2019