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Network Restructuring (Network Design and Equipment)

This is the real commercial problem face by my company. Well, the reason I ask this problem is I salute and respect all of you as I believe all of you are as good as network solution company out there, or even better!!

Lets me rephrase the entire problem again.

Company expand so fast that the IT infrastructure is not fast enough to cater high volume of traffic; the initial design is not scalable. The number of new branch offices setup caused the company pay a high price in the leased line communication. Salesman and management staffs dial into company networks via 56K modem to access the database server and update the sale order. All the branch offices access the internet via HQ and download email via the external POP3 email server. Plan to revamp their IT infrastructure and reduce the leased line access cost. Here are some of the feedbacks consolidated from the various country managers and local salesman.

1) The email downloading and sending is very slow. They receive a lot of spam email this caused their individual mailbox quota use up very fast. 2) The sales and marketing departments need to access the internet to search for latest news and market trends. But the internet speed is very slow. These people are irritated by spywares and popup often. 3) The File transfer and Database access is very slow even in the local area networks.

I decided to put the real network cum equipment diagram of my current company as I believe this will at least give INSIGHT in solving the problem.

Please visit the website

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the diagrams which are network diagram and equipment diagram.

Now I plan to improve the IT infrastructure to cater for future expansion up to 10 countries. SAP will be implement to automate the overall company operation. Also expect 3rd party to access their server to submit and view sale order.

I also plan to redesign the network so that it is high available, scalable and secure.

Any suggestion and opinion? What is your comment after looking at my network and its insfrastructure (from the diagrams on

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) Any improving needed?

My email is snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com Of course you can reply here, preferable :>

Thanks again for your opinion!! Thank You!!

Reply to
hunkgym
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1 I am in the USA so I cannot speak for pricing structures in your country or any other contry outside of the USA so this may or may not save you money. 2 Lots of questions need to be answered? IE, What is the speed and duplex of HQ LAN Is HQ or Remote offices Switched or using hubs? If switched are they managed or unmanged If managed are you using vlans? Are you routing VLANS? 3 If you are using hubs and not switches get rid of them and replace them with switches. 4 Start using VPN technology instead of leased lines. get rid of the leased lines. For small remote offices get DSL or some other cheap internet solution. For HQ and Large remote offices get full/fractional T1/T3 lines as needed. Buy Cisco PIX 501/505/515( the only reason I mention Cisco is because it is what I am familiar with) or some other security appliance that can be configured to use site-site vpn tunnels. this will be how you will connect the remote locations to HQ site. 5 Perform network analsys on LAN to find out how much of your LAN is being used. if you are running 100M Full Duplex Switched LAN and you are still saturated then it is time to upgrade to Gigabit or start thinking about using VLANS(this takes into effect things like you have made sure any unneccessary broadcasting done over the LAN has been rectified. For example if you do not need netbuei, or ipx, or DLC, or netbios then turn it off on all workstations, servers, and printers.)

Who is hosting your web and email service? It seems to me according to your drawing the web and email services are not inside your own network as represented by the WAN cloud in the drawing. If you are paying a service to get email and web then go to them with your slow email delivery concerns.

These are only a few suggestions and should no way be accepted as a total solution. the only way to get a total solution is to hire a consultant or do the detailed network analsys yourself.

Reply to
Newbie72

Full/fractional T1/T3 lines are usually leased point-to-point lines. (Around here, they are also considerably more expensive than burstable fibre.

We aren't given enough information about the reliability requirements or about the traffic patterns or about the effect of latency on the OP's application, to know whether DSL or similar would be an effective solution.

I did not examine the diagram to see if there was enough information there to judge whether DSL or similar are likely to be available at the remote offices.

(I know someone who lived about 1 mile down the road from his Central Office, but could not get DSL because the phone lines happened to be routed a couple of miles up to the next major street, across from there, and then back to where he was, with there being no direct path. It was just a geographical accident based upon where the right-of-ways ran. Anyhow, the point is that you can't assume that DSL or cable is available, not even in well-established areas of "important" cities.)

Reply to
Walter Roberson

did not examine the diagram to see if there was enough information there to judge whether DSL or similar are likely to be available at the remote offices. The diagram does not tell much other than 64k lease lines and the offices it connects. they do not show any information on architecture or type hardware used. being 64k leased lines the drawing leaves youo to make a asumption they are frame relay circuits.

Either way there is not enough info in the post. i was just trying to make some suggestions of different types of technologies to look for. I thought I had tried to present the statement that what is available to me as far as technology goes may not be available to others in my post.

I am not looking at the drawing now but i seem to remember his fastest link was 256k.

Anyway. Best of luck

Steve

Reply to
Newbie72

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