Network Technology and Architecture

Network Technology and Architecture

Network Technology and Architecture

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Network Technology and Architecture

Network technology is an important component in the IT infrastructure. For a new medium-sized food store business the value of a stable and an efficient network is important. This is because the network architecture provides an access to the administrative and operational areas of any business or organizations. Executive management, Operations, Human Resources and Finance among other departments in an organizations are all connected directly to the network backbone (Druckrey,1996). This paper discusses the network technology and architecture that can be implemented for a new medium-sized food store to be opened in my hometown.

The name of the food store will be Tropical Lounge & Restaurant to be located in the booming and rapidly expanding City of Kelsey, Florida. Tropical Lounge & Restaurant will be a dining restaurant with a 20 seat lounge. The food store will be medium sized with one General Manager, two senior chefs, two accountants, one human resource manager, one marketing strategist and about 10 employees. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the food store has expressed the desire to design a network architecture for the business. This design include configuration of hardware and software components of a networking architecture.

This paper discusses and summarizes the network technology and technology to be designed for the business.

Our objective for implementing the network is to facilitate sharing of the automated data processed by the hotel management system that will be implemented in the business. All the departments of the restaurant will include the hotel’s lodge, the mangers office and the accountant desk (Druckrey,1996). This means that three computers will be required and networked among these three departments. The information will include computation of daily orders and because the food store will include several guest houses, the computer based information system will enable the employees of the restaurant to see the rooms that have been checked in and those checked out. By this room reservation will be efficient by planning on the bookings. This information will be shared among the user or attendant who will be taking the orders and forward it to the accountant who after calculating the day’s transactions will give weekly report to the manager of the food store.

Based on these requirements a network technology is important in the organization in order to effectively share these information (Druckrey,1996).  The food store business will thus require to purchase 3 computers, network cables, a switch and the software required to develop the network. Since the networking type that Tropical Lounge & Restaurant will be running on is a Local Area Network (LAN), Ethernet or wired technology and Peer-to-peer network architecture would be the most appropriate for this business due to the reasons discussed below. First, it is important to understand that computer networks are classified according to the hardware and software technology used to interconnect the separate devices in the network. For this restaurant a wired technology will be used.

Ethernet Technology

The specific wired technology will be the twisted pair wire which is the most appropriate medium for telecommunication for this business. Twisted-pair wires consist of two insulated copper wires that are twisted into pairs to be used for both data transmission and voice communication within the network (Burkhardt, 2002). The two wires that are twisted together will help to reduce crosstalk in the network. The networking architecture of the Patton-Fuller hotel and restaurant will consist of a single major backbone of the network with a 1000 Base T using CAT6 cable.

Twisted pair cabling with four pairs of twisted wires connected to a RJ-45 plug at the end

Purpose of Networking

There are several reason for networking your computers. The purpose of the network is however dependant on the needs of the organization or business creating the network. Because the networks for Tropical Lounge & Restaurant will be for sharing business information as mention and other simple tasks such as sharing a printer, Peer-to-peer network architecture will be used (Burkhardt, 2002). There will be no need of a server because there are no or they can advanced applications involved such as use of internet and complex point-of-sale systems.

Peer-to-peer networking.

Peer-to-peer is the specific networking architecture that will be used for this business. This is because Peer-to-peer architecture provide a simple and low-cost network connection method for such a small business. The personal computers within the two departments will be networked via this architecture so as to allow files sharing between the manager and the accountant. Other resources such as the printer and a scanner will also be shared using this architecture (Druckrey,1996). One advantage of peer-to-peer networking is that it does not require a server, thereby reducing the expenses of purchasing an extra powerful computer to serve as the server. The network operating system that supports peer-to-peer networking is the only requirement needed to be installed in this type of architecture.

In a peer-to-peer computer architecture, a peer computer acts as both the client and the server computer. Peer computers have the ability to access resources within the network and supply network resources to the other peer computers(Druckrey,1996).. Each computer in a peer-to-peer network holds its resources although the other computers in the network can access these resources if the computer containing the resource is turned on.

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Advantages of Peer-to-peer network

Less initial expenses will be incurred as there will be no purchase of a dedicated server.

The architecture will not require a network administrator to run the machines as is the case with client server model where a network administrator runs the server machine. This reduces further on the costs.

It will be fast and inexpensive to setup and maintain the peer-to-peer network

Security issue is addressed by each PC being able to make backup copies of the data saved there and store in the other machines for security purposes.

Conclusion

Peer-to-peer network has some limitations as all the other networks. However, these is an issue that has been looked into before decided to implement this networking model. Peer to peer network supports limited number of computers not exceeding 15 computers. For a medium sized food store we don’t intend to increase the number of computers above five so this issue will not be a concern. When the business grows, the goal is to expand by opening new branches of the business and therefore peer-to-peer model is appropriate for my business. Security issues is a major issue with peer-to-peer networking but this would be addressed by having security resources such as antivirus programs and firewall on each machine. This is different from client/server model where the server is centralized and controls the client machines. Training of staff will be required as is true for all the other networks. This would be solved by setting a certain amount of cash to train the users of the machines.

References

Verma, P. K., & Saltzberg, B. R. (1990). ISDN systems: Architecture, technology, and applications. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall.

Burkhardt, J. (2002). Pervasive computing: Technology and architecture of mobile Internet applications. Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Druckrey, T. (1996). Electronic culture: Technology and visual representation. New York: Aperture.