The first step will be to select an organization as the target for your network design and architecture proposal document. This organization will be used as the basis for each of the assignments throughout the course and should conform to the following guidelines:

• Nontrivial: The selected organization should be large enough to allow reasonable exercise of the network design process.
• Domain Knowledge: You should be familiar enough with the organization to allow for focus on the project’s tasks without the significant time required for domain education.
• Accessibility: You should have good access to the people and other information related to the organization because this will be an important part of the process.

The selected organization may already have a distributed network in place, but it can still be used as the basis for the projects in this course.

The selected organization must have a need for some kind of distributed network computing as part of their operations. Therefore, you may identify a hypothetical organization that meets these requirements. Any necessary assumptions may be made to fulfill the requirements of organization selection process.

Select an existing organization, or identify a hypothetical organization that fits these requirements, and submit your proposal to your instructor before proceeding with the assignments in the course. Approval should be sought within the first several days of the course. Your instructor will tell you how to submit this proposal and what notification will be given for project approval.

Assignment:

For the assignments in this course, you will not be implementing a distributed network, but you will be developing a comprehensive network design and architecture proposal document. Your first task in this process will be to select an organization or identify a hypothetical organization to use as the basis of your project. You will also create the shell document for the final project deliverable that you will be working on during each unit. As you proceed through each project phase, you will add content to each section of the final document to gradually complete the final project deliverable. Appropriate research should be conducted to support the development of your proposal document, and assumptions may be made when necessary.

The project deliverables are as follows:

• Submit the organization proposal to your instructor for approval.
• Submit the network design and architecture proposal document shell
  • Use Word
  • Title page
    • Course number and name
    • Project name
    • Student name
    • Date
  • Table of contents
    • Use autogenerated TOC
    • Separate page
    • Maximum of 3 levels deep
    • Be sure to update the fields of the TOC so it is up-to-date before submitting your project.
  • Section headings (create each heading on a new page with TBD as content except for sections listed under new content below)
    • Project Outline
    • Distributed Network Requirements Analysis
    • Communication Protocols Analysis and Recommendations
    • Network Traffic Analysis and Recommendations
    • Network Design and Architecture
    • Future Needs Analysis and Recommendations
  • New content
    • Project outline and requirements
    • Brief description of the organization (can be hypothetical) where the network will be implemented
      • Include company size, location(s), and other pertinent information.
    • Summary of the benefits that the company would realize through distributed networking
    • Material can be taken from the approved proposal that was submitted to the instructor.
    • Ensure that this project is approved by the instructor.
  • Distributed network requirements analysis
    • Describe at least 5 major areas of functionality needed by the organization that can be provided through distributed networking.
    • For each area of functionality, include information to identify capacity and performance requirements.
    • Identify connectivity and security requirements for the proposed network.
    • Include any other requirements that will affect your design and architecture, such as the use of existing network infrastructure, budget limitations, existing applications and operating systems, and so forth.
• Name the document yourname_CS635_IP1.doc.