Multiple office Sites

[Guest]

Hi, 

I am currently doing my diploma in Information Technology (Networking) and I have the assignment to upgrade and design a new network for XXXXX business. So this scenario business has 4 Offices total with a Head Office and they are all in different cities.  Now what would like to know is, what is involved with connecting multiple offices into one network and what would be best practice?

If you wish to see the scenario supplied I am more than happy to supply it as well. 
 

[kb5zue]

Wifi means not having to run cables in/on/around walls.  Would require wifi network cards for each machine along with the modem/router equipment.

 

[Donut417]

8 minutes ago, Fallen Soul said:

Hi, 

I am currently doing my diploma in Information Technology (Networking) and I have the assignment to upgrade and design a new network for XXXXX business. So this scenario business has 4 Offices total with a Head Office.  Now what would like to know is, what is involved with connecting multiple offices into one network and what would be best practice?

If you wish to see the scenario supplied I am more than happy to supply it as well. 
 

Im not an expert but some things that come to mind.

1. Use a VPN to connect the offices together. Not sure how that would be cofingured or if it would work. 
2. Dedicated connection between each. Many companines own dark fiber that can be rented out, so I would assume if the company has the money they could connect via that way
3. Some kinda of wireless, that would limited by distance however. 

1 minute ago, kb5zue said:

Wifi means not having to run cables in/on/around walls.  Would require wifi network cards for each machine along with the modem/router equipment.

 

Dude, he means 4 separate office buildings. Not 4 office rooms. 

[kb5zue]

4 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Im not an expert but some things that come to mind.

1. Use a VPN to connect the offices together. Not sure how that would be cofingured or if it would work. 
2. Dedicated connection between each. Many companines own dark fiber that can be rented out, so I would assume if the company has the money they could connect via that way
3. Some kinda of wireless, that would limited by distance however. 

Dude, he means 4 separate office buildings. Not 4 office rooms. 

My mistake then, sorry.  I thought he meant four offices becaue he said, "4 Offices total with a Head Office".  Never said anything about four different buildings or four different cities.

 

[Guest]

How about I post the scenario so it makes more sense 

 

 

Instructions.pdf

[Levisallanon]

Haven't been able to read the assignment in much detail (want to get some sleep now as I just realized it's past 4 am already ), but from what I see you have a few options to consider:

1) migth not be what they are looking for but probably a very good solution is to take everything to the cloud. Use Azure with a Azure Domain Controller (you can have an onprem backup too) and have exchange running in the cloud too. You can use something like microsoft teams (skype for busniness) for the VoIP communication.

2) if you want to have stuff onprem you probably want to look into ways to connect the offices together. You might want to look into this:
https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/network-infrastructure-documents/how-to-configure-a-gre-tunnel/ta-p/3131970

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Levisallanon said:

Haven't been able to read the assignment in much detail (want to get some sleep now as I just realized it's past 4 am already ), but from what I see you have a few options to consider:

1) migth not be what they are looking for but probably a very good solution is to take everything to the cloud. Use Azure with a Azure Domain Controller (you can have an onprem backup too) and have exchange running in the cloud too. You can use something like microsoft teams (skype for busniness) for the VoIP communication.

2) if you want to have stuff onprem you probably want to look into ways to connect the offices together. You might want to look into this:
https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/network-infrastructure-documents/how-to-configure-a-gre-tunnel/ta-p/3131970

thanks, i will have a read. 

[brwainer]

If the 5 sites are in the same metro area, then I would look at renting direct links in a star topology, from a Metro Area Network provider. This type of product is called Transport, because they can only transports data between you sites and not to the internet, as opposed to DIA meaning Dedicated Internet Access. I would then spec that each site has a DIA connection. The actual site-to-site traffic would be routed through a GRE or similar tunnel, which is configured to normally use the MAN links and can failover to the DIA. The fact that a tunnel is used makes the failover easier, and lets you add a layer of encryption for security no matter what path it is taking.

 

This is just one approach, and sort of feels like I’m doing part of your homework for you

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, brwainer said:

If the 5 sites are in the same metro area, then I would look at renting direct links in a star topology, from a Metro Area Network provider. This type of product is called Transport, because they can only transports data between you sites and not to the internet, as opposed to DIA meaning Dedicated Internet Access. I would then spec that each site has a DIA connection. The actual site-to-site traffic would be routed through a GRE or similar tunnel, which is configured to normally use the MAN links and can failover to the DIA. The fact that a tunnel is used makes the failover easier, and lets you add a layer of encryption for security no matter what path it is taking.

 

This is just one approach, and sort of feels like I’m doing part of your homework for you

thanks. will also look into this. you're more than welcome to do it for me if you want

 

i would say they are scattered across a the state / country 

[brwainer]

20 minutes ago, Fallen Soul said:

thanks. will also look into this. you're more than welcome to do it for me if you want

 

i would say they are scattered across a the state / country 

Ah thenyou still want to look into Transport services, but finding a company that can provide a connection to all of them becomes harder. You don’t necessarily need dedicated fiber (dark fiber) but you do want something like MPLS for low and reliable latency, especially since the project spec mentions VOIP.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, brwainer said:

Ah thenyou still want to look into Transport services, but finding a company that can provide a connection to all of them becomes harder. You don’t necessarily need dedicated fiber (dark fiber) but you do want something like MPLS for low and reliable latency, especially since the project spec mentions VOIP.

this is starting to sound like a huge arse assignment

[bcguru9384]

4 hours ago, Fallen Soul said:

Hi, 

I am currently doing my diploma in Information Technology (Networking) and I have the assignment to upgrade and design a new network for XXXXX business. So this scenario business has 4 Offices total with a Head Office and they are all in different cities.  Now what would like to know is, what is involved with connecting multiple offices into one network and what would be best practice?

If you wish to see the scenario supplied I am more than happy to supply it as well. 
 

each building gets own server/exchange so that you would use a website(would be locally run on servers) that each client of local network access resources of the site via site user accounts system

servers would sync with each other as a schedule or realtime or both

users with wan(internet side access to site is controllable)

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, Fallen Soul said:

this is starting to sound like a huge arse assignment

The scenario didn't give you that impression? This is going to be a 30-50 page report from the looks of it.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, brwainer said:

The scenario didn't give you that impression? This is going to be a 30-50 page report from the looks of it.

yeah, it kinda did. Shoot me now. I have a second one like this also. This seems more like a Bachelor degree level, not diploma

 

[Lurick]

3 hours ago, Fallen Soul said:

yeah, it kinda did. Shoot me now. I have a second one like this also. This seems more like a Bachelor degree level, not diploma

 

This assignment is insane for your level. I could spend hours or even a couple days just outlining option D alone in a detailed manner.

[Levisallanon]

also it seems like you have existing topologies etc avaible. and stakeholder interviews. These sources of information might give a glimps of what is present and what they want specificly. So you'd better start by cataloging everything and find out all the requirements.
Looks like a fun challenge but something which can take a lot of time :p.

 

how much time did they give you for this? In a corporate envirioment something like this would probably take about 2 months to figure out (if it's done by 1 person which also has to do his normal activities).

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Levisallanon said:

also it seems like you have existing topologies etc avaible. and stakeholder interviews. These sources of information might give a glimps of what is present and what they want specificly. So you'd better start by cataloging everything and find out all the requirements.
Looks like a fun challenge but something which can take a lot of time :p.

 

how much time did they give you for this? In a corporate envirioment something like this would probably take about 2 months to figure out (if it's done by 1 person which also has to do his normal activities).

in the morning i can supply the other information. i would say maybe 3 months for this one, 3 months for my next one that's simila. so my diploma is meant to be completed within 12 months. i have already done 2 months. i have 3 major assignments remaining 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Lurick said:

This assignment is insane for your level. I could spend hours or even a couple days just outlining option D alone in a detailed manner.

sounds like you may have a fair bit of experience with this stuff. any help would be good

[Levisallanon]

1 minute ago, Fallen Soul said:

in the morning i can supply the other information. i would say maybe 3 months for this one, 3 months for my next one that's simila. so my diploma is meant to be completed within 12 months. i have already done 2 months. i have 3 major assignments remaining 

Well I don't want to sound blund (but being dutch I will probably still be considered blund by most other people anyways) but I don't think anyone here has the time (and knowledge) to help you with this completly.
I would suggest you first get a better grip of the problem and outline the problem better. Once you have specific question You are welcome to ask them here, but just giving one of the points as a question here is not viable. not to mention a lot of people on this forum will give misinformation because they are mostly used to consumer grade equipment while you need to work with enterprise grade and have other consideration (like safety and documentation and compliancy).

So best you start organising the assignment first and once you want some specific answers feel free to ask. I do think there are some knowledgable people here with experience in the field who can help you if you frame the question right.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Levisallanon said:

Well I don't want to sound blund (but being dutch I will probably still be considered blund by most other people anyways) but I don't think anyone here has the time (and knowledge) to help you with this completly.
I would suggest you first get a better grip of the problem and outline the problem better. Once you have specific question You are welcome to ask them here, but just giving one of the points as a question here is not viable. not to mention a lot of people on this forum will give misinformation because they are mostly used to consumer grade equipment while you need to work with enterprise grade and have other consideration (like safety and documentation and compliancy).

So best you start organising the assignment first and once you want some specific answers feel free to ask. I do think there are some knowledgable people here with experience in the field who can help you if you frame the question right.

that's why i asked the original question as i am trying to work out what i need or how to go about certain stuff. i also need to look into setting up main servers but reality is i would go with office 365 for business. 

[Levisallanon]

Just now, Fallen Soul said:

that's why i asked the original question as i am trying to work out what i need or how to go about certain stuff. i also need to look into setting up main servers but reality is i would go with office 365 for business. 

You are asking to have multiple sites share a single network. There are thousands of ways of doing this. Without knowing the locations and requirements it's just not possible. First you want to look at the local infrastructures and determine the vlan setups etc. You also need to determine how much data will be shared between these sites. You also need to know if you need encrypted channels or not etc. You need to see what kind of equipment you have and what kind of connections are aviable to you. Now you need to see where the connections have to go to, because maybe by the time you set up your server architecture you find out it's better to have an offsite server site where every office connects to due to bandwith limitations (for example). Or maybe you will have different sites for different things (like for example one of the offices has the financial deparment which houses the ERP software application server while another site houses a renderfarm etc) these will require different considerations maybe.
So without knowing more it's not really feasable to give you any good advice at the moment. Try to gather as much information as possible first before making a plan, that's normally how you want to work in a corperate envirioment also, the amount of options you have to do stuff is almost limitless but your budget and time aren't. Say for example you want to connect to sites with darkfiber then that would be possible but if they lines aren't there yet they have to be constructed etc which takes time and money, maybe this time and money isn't avaible so that would drop this option. Often when looking at problems like these you first want to narrow your perimeters as much as possible to limit your choices, then you can present the options you have with a cost and risk estimate to the directores/stakeholders to have them decide.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Levisallanon said:

You are asking to have multiple sites share a single network. There are thousands of ways of doing this. Without knowing the locations and requirements it's just not possible. First you want to look at the local infrastructures and determine the vlan setups etc. You also need to determine how much data will be shared between these sites. You also need to know if you need encrypted channels or not etc. You need to see what kind of equipment you have and what kind of connections are aviable to you. Now you need to see where the connections have to go to, because maybe by the time you set up your server architecture you find out it's better to have an offsite server site where every office connects to due to bandwith limitations (for example). Or maybe you will have different sites for different things (like for example one of the offices has the financial deparment which houses the ERP software application server while another site houses a renderfarm etc) these will require different considerations maybe.
So without knowing more it's not really feasable to give you any good advice at the moment. Try to gather as much information as possible first before making a plan, that's normally how you want to work in a corperate envirioment also, the amount of options you have to do stuff is almost limitless but your budget and time aren't. Say for example you want to connect to sites with darkfiber then that would be possible but if they lines aren't there yet they have to be constructed etc which takes time and money, maybe this time and money isn't avaible so that would drop this option. Often when looking at problems like these you first want to narrow your perimeters as much as possible to limit your choices, then you can present the options you have with a cost and risk estimate to the directores/stakeholders to have them decide.

i have some information which i will add in a zip file in the morning for future questions. however, i don't think it's supplied  much info and the chances of getting any more info would be next to none. this is why i hate fake scenarios as i can't get any more info than what has been supplied. 

 

all i can tell you now is they are running Windows server 2000, windows Xp workstations, ADSL internet connection. 

 

note: this type of stuff is not my strong point and never will until i have to work with it in real life. 

[brwainer]

4 hours ago, Fallen Soul said:

all i can tell you now is they are running Windows server 2000, windows Xp workstations, ADSL internet connection. 

jeez sounds like this scenario was written a decade or two ago and they've been reusing it since then. Yes, businesses like that exist today, but anything fiber related would be a vast change compared to 2000/XP-era ADSL (around 1.5Mb/s).

[Levisallanon]

39 minutes ago, brwainer said:

jeez sounds like this scenario was written a decade or two ago and they've been reusing it since then. Yes, businesses like that exist today, but anything fiber related would be a vast change compared to 2000/XP-era ADSL (around 1.5Mb/s).

He has to write an upgrade plan for the office, so actually this situation is quite suitable. Compagnies like this would now hire an exteral compagny to do this work because they just don't have the time for it and now are really getting into problems with their current infrastructure....

[Guest]

OK, 

I have uploaded the resources that cover the current typology (well it doesn't really), company profile etc

Resources.rar