Hi, May I know how to solve this problem?

 

The holding company that owns NDAS has just purchased a regional trucking company called Sunshine Trucking (ST). NDAS believes that ST offers a way to build revenues in an area in which it has experience (package delivery), even though ST will not operate directly with NDAS. ST focuses on large commercial shipments (e.g., food products for wholesalers, packaged goods for department stores).

At present, ST has a very poor data communications network. Because you have done such a good job on the NDAS network, President Coone offers your expertise to ST to help with their new network.

ST operates three regional shipping hubs: Miami, Dallas, and Atlanta. Each of these regional hubs is responsible for taking shipping requests from customers and scheduling pickups and deliveries. Each regional hub has about four dozen computers are networked to each other using a small LAN and need to be connected onto a WAN. The computers access the network server (a Windows NT file server) and the corporate minicomputer almost constantly. The current LAN is a 10 Mbps Ethernet that is beginning to become overloaded with the network traffic. The regional hubs communicate with one another fairly regularly via a VPN connection, usually a dozen times an hour.

The Atlanta hub also houses the corporate head office and therefore has an additional 20 computers for use by corporate staff. This office also has the aforementioned corporate minicomputer that processes all accounting data (a UNIX computer). There has been some discussion about establishing a corporate Website, but no plans have been made.

ST has a series of seven local offices for short-term storage, truck maintenance, and managing the local drivers: Houston, New Orleans, Jackson, Birmingham, Tallahassee, Charlotte, and Memphis. Each regional office has 5 to 10 computers that are peer networked together but need to be connected to the WAN. These computers have fairly minimal networking requirements. At present, each local office sends data to the aforementioned corporate minicomputer at the end of each day by sending one diskette via overnight courier(NDAS). ST would like to automate this process so that it can transmit the data via a network. ST also would like to enable the local offices to communicate with all the regional hubs (and perhaps with one another) but do NOT anticipate needing to send a large amount of data.

Based on your assessment of the large number of changes that need to occur, you quickly realise that you do NOT have the time to design and implement the new network yourself. Thus, you suggest that a vendor help with this project and you volunteer to create an Request for Proposal (RFP) to be sent out to some local networking vendors for their consideration. Using the outline provided in the textbook section 6.4.1, create an RFP for ST’s new network. Keep in mind that you need to think about their network at the LAN, MAN, WAN, and BN levels. Also, please remember that typically an RFP includes the following sections: 1) Background information with subsections for Organizational profile, Overview of current network, Overview of new network, and Goals of new network, 2) Network requirements with subsections for Choice sets of possible network designs (hardware, software, circuits), Mandatory, desirable, and wish-list items, Security and control requirements, Response-time requirements, and Guidelines for proposing new network designs, 3) Service requirements with subsections for Implementation time plan, Training courses and materials, Support services (e.g., spare parts on site), and Reliability and performance guarantees, 4) Bidding process with subsections for Time schedule for the bidding process, Ground rules, Bid evaluation criteria, and Availability of additional information, and 5) Information required from vendor with subsections for Vendor corporate profile, Experience with similar networks