Wireless Network Design Assignment: Project for Jones Hospital

Question

Task: The IS manager from Jones Hospital has hired you as a consultant to provide a wireless LAN solution for their hospital network. The hospital employs just over 800 employees, working in a complex composed of seven buildings in an urban area. All the buildings are close enough in proximity that employees frequently walk between buildings. The management staff wants to deploy wireless technology in their enterprise network. They have heard that this type of network will save them money as opposed to the current leased line network. They believe that the added mobility will also dramatically increase productivity. Since the staff moves from building to building, it seems to be the right idea to provide them with computer equipment and data that will roam with them.
The assessment requires you to plan and design a wireless network for the hospital using any industry tool of your choice.

Answer

Introduction
In this project, a wireless network design will be planned and develop for Jones Hospital. Jones Hospital is an Australia based organization, which comprises of seven buildings within its complex area. The specific report will be going to develop a wireless network design for the organization as well for its employees such that it can provide them strategy in saving revenue and delivers more productivity as well. A WLAN design employs radio waves as its carrier. Therefore, the entire network design will be based on star topology because based on the design of building complex it will be easier to implement this framework. Jones Hospital and it’s IS manager has thus hired a consultant by offer this project to provide a solution for their hospital network. The organization contains more than 800 employees and therefore, at the end of the report, following this framework, it will be aiming in making an efficient network design for the organization.

Requirement Analysis
A networking topology is needed for Jones hospital, which will provide a reliable communication and infrastructure for the employee such that they couldn’t face any disruption in network. There are various types of network devices that can be mapped for designing the network for Jones Hospital. It will include controllable radio networks, computer networking devices along with other important wireless devices. Therefore, a suitable mapping of network utilizing the designing of LAN will be developed by implementing Star topology.

Star topology will be utilized for the case that is given below:

Figure: Jones Hospital Building

The selected topology will be utilized where every computing device for the employees with related peripherals will be connected to main switch in each building.
There is some Hardware requirements that will be required for designing the network design and they are as follows:

1. LAN connection Cat 6 optical cables (all 7 buildings in specific department)
2. Wired routers (Each building [2] ×7= 14 pc)
3. Switches (7 for seven buildings)
4. Computers (Each building [5] ×7= 35 pc, 1TB Hard Disk Drive (HDD), 8GB of RAM, Processors will be of Intel i5 10thGeneration with 64 bit Windows 10 OS
5. Printers (Each building [3] ×7 =21 pc
6. Server (2 for both Medical and Surgical ward)

The seven buildings are comprised of some principal sections, Medical and Surgical segments where the Medical segment is holding 3 building and other 2 is Surgical segment, 1 is accounts and medicine building and remaining central single part is the main reception or emergency building.

• All seven building will contain seven switches that will be connected with the computers wired or wirelessly.
• The Star topology would be designed in such a way that the information which comes from the central dual server computer will be distributed equally to each device on seven buildings without data collision and hacking [3].
• The standard of the networks is vital for composing the technical parameters and specifications through which, the design of network framework will be developed. Jones Hospital and kits network design will be assigned with IEEE and ANSI standards.
• For the wireless networking components, for each device the Network Interface Card is essential for facilitating the user device connections [2].
• Several class B protocols are needed to set the standards of network according to OSI reference model. The number of internet protocols, which will be assigned for required number of devices will be accountable for sharing the data between the wireless switches to routers.
• The transmission control protocol will be formulated in order transmit the data packets over the terminology without any errors.

System requirements
As Jones Hospital is a medium-sized organization, it doesn’t have infinite departments and therefore, each of the employees of the organization takes their individual resources in Australian based healthcare provider. Thus, for avoiding any problems within the network infrastructure, the computers in each of the seven building are connected to seven 10/100 Mb switches with 12 ports each [10]. The employees including doctors, nurse, admin, management staffs will be equipped with highly configures computers with:

• 8GB RAM
• 1TB HDD
• Each PC with 4 USB ports and with Windows 10 OS enterprise edition
• Processors will be AMD Ryzen 7 of 10th gen
• A DVD/CD writer optical drive will also have attached with each machines
• Several doctors will have different IoT enabled devices like room temperature monitoring for vaccines, medical information transferring tools, air quality sensors, drug effectiveness tracking machine, data capturing machine, sleep monitor for patients, medication refill reminder technology, remote biometric sensors, safety and sleep tools for infants [4].
• A HP laser printer will be connected with each of the computer devices
  Most of the computer devices will be running on Windows 10 OS such that each device can have high flexibility to execute advance operations. Nevertheless, it is mandatory for the employees and managers of the hospital to share files within the building and associated departments. Majority of files like medical history records, discharge summary, medicine billing docs, medical test reports, mental status investigation reports, ICU/ECG reports, blood examination reports will be of various sizes and will be needed for transferring between the departments accurately and quickly [2]. These record files will also be available for downloads and operation while any doctors or staffs will be away from the enterprise. The printers that will be allocated will be comprised to each computers making copies of documents at every department.

Network Design

Figure: Network Diagram of Jones Hospital
(Source: Created by Author)

Critical Analysis
According to [4], the wireless internet access via the interface of LANs in the following network design has been connected to each of the departments in each of the building. It will be accessed by all designated staffs of the hospital. The main building has two central servers where one connects to three building and another one connects to four building. In the physical design of network, the router, switches, server, computers, printers and other IoT devices are being utilized to connect to each other within the campus. Therefore, author [3] on the contrary, stated that the Star topology that has been developed will be beneficial during any failure of a particular part of the network.

The suitable topology will provide an ease in addressing the probabilities of network failures. The core networking devices, distribution switches are interconnected with redundancy. It is executed such that any management staffs of the hospital can follow the address links by connecting across internet connections. The router network interface is classified for allocating the address protocols to several points of WLAN. Moreover, the WLAN points are thus classified for allocating the address protocols and it is done because the connected devices across the network can get quickly assigned with a single default gateway. Therefore, according to [1], for improving the organizational productivity, the wireless access points must have been distributed to each of the seven buildings with specific department. It allows the customers in accessing the internet easily without any disruption of services. The central application server is in the main building associated with DNS and certificate server. It shares the WLAN information to the switches of separate building and further it connected to every departmental rooms. Thus, it is placed at the central network management.

As per [3], the Star topology network in the above diagram has followed the IPv4 address, which is assigned to each and every device within the network. The IoT devices are also have an access to connected to Jones hospital network and therefore, if any failure occurs in a particular segment, the other devices and terminal will be remaining secured.

As stated by [5], the Class B IP address will be assigned to the network design as it it’s a medium size organization and it requires adequate subnets and hosts for the following infrastructure. There are around 80 to 100 hosts in the entire organization along with the laser printers, servers and IoT devices. The switches, hubs, routers, access points are the part of this Star topology that makes the connection between every device within the campus. Therefore, in the network layer, all the connection will be made utilizing the MAC address of each device. In every five computers, the routers will be connected so that the data that are retrieved by the hosts could be equally distributed with equal bandwidth. [6] suggests that, switch is an important thing that are connected to each of the building with its respective floors such that no connection could be lost or inadequate for connecting devices. So, switches with 12 ports have been installed at every end user points.

The DNS and certificate server is important to install because if there is an occurrence of critical condition like having small storage and insecure connection, the employees of hospital can retrieve benefits from this services. These devices are suitably utilized during this situation types in the organization for increasing the services and having a non-interruptive operation.

The network firewalls are vital and it is being installed because it will secure the IP address of each of the computing devices through offering shield between the connection of internet through encrypting the transmitted data into the machines from the central servers [6]. On the reference model of 7th layer, the firewall services operate and it will be used in order to secure the computer IP proxies and configurations.

As per the suggestions of [8], the internet appliances and wireless controllers are being installed because in many cases there could be shortage of wires or connections to connect with the internet and so, for this reason, the wireless controllers are being utilized for serving a continuous connection with the server.

The Voice over internet protocols are enabled with the IoT devices that would deliver the tasks due to various abilities. Therefore, it will work like getting the access to the hosts from a single side to other sides.

Technological requirements
The department of the admin in the hospital will lead an access to the other medical, surgical, finance and HR departments. All these departments will make a reliable connection across this Star topology as the external illegitimate networks will not be able to access within the campus due to the presence of trunks, DHCP servers and VPN technology services. According to [7], the virtual private network that is installed in the network design will provide a better solution to the campus for organizing a well secured and protected network. The IPSec services has been deployed as it is one type of security protocol that configured with the VPNs such that it could have more security to the hosts along with the related servers. The encryption that is being provided will offer a protected type activity that will support the interconnection in a privatized way.

[7] explains that The users can connect through distinctive SSID for each of the user segments with the deployment of SSID segregated to individual virtual LANs. The particular wireless connection is protected by significant authenticated protocols. The SSIFD amount will be kept to minimum in order to avoid negative performance impact due additional traffic management. As per the recommendations of [8], each of the SSID has been acquired with isolate beacon message, which will be broadcasted with lowest data rates and thus impact in the performance of the allocated network design.

Constraint and limitations
There are some constraints and limitations that the current proposed design has been experienced that the Wi-Fi radio signals are susceptible to restriction areas where the interference can minimize the signal strength and throughput of the devices. It has been ensured that the following restrictions were the key factors that were probably mortifying the performance at certain surrounding areas. It is the cause that the area has some weak strength of wireless signals caused due to overlapping of access points causing disruption of connections at sometimes and thus denying adequate user access [9]. The major constraints were in the installation of new access points around the complicated roof structure facility that limits only few possible points. Therefore, it can be resolved by mounting the access points on the side walls of the building instead of placing those over the roof lounges. As per Jones Hospital’s specification, cost and time constraints, requirements, it is suggested to proposing the new network design with deploying necessary modifications by adding required resources of network and hardware to enhance reliability, network performance, throughput and efficiency. Therefore, it is assured that this solution will be meeting the client’s requirements and the end user requirements as well.

Conclusion
In this specific report, Jones Hospital and its network infrastructure diagram has been developed for making its service more flexible, scalable and deliver better productivity to clients. The technical and business focus of the organization has been focused and an associated network design thus, has been developed to offer better services to the staffs and management as well. the design has been architecture in such a way, that in upcoming days, the network infrastructure will provide a lossless and rigid connectivity even in a disastrous condition. Therefore, the current study has addressed a scalable network design for the campus with implementing several equipmentat each of the seven buildings as well. The WLAN development hence, have been completed in the project along with deploying enough network security features. In the end, some constraints and limitations of this network design project are also discussed while executing the operations.

References
[1]M. Bhardwaj, "On new star-selection principles in topology", Topology and its Applications, vol. 279, p. 107244, 2020. Available: 10.1016/j.topol.2020.107244.

[2]"IEEE Computer Society Social Networking", Computer, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. C3-C3, 2019. Available: 10.1109/mc.2019.2921173.

[3]A. Shekhar, "What Is Star Topology? Advantages And Disadvantages Of A Star Topology", Fossbytes, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://fossbytes.com/star-topology-advantages-disadvantages-star-topology/.

[4]"A Multi-objective Hierarchical Location-allocation Model for the Healthcare Network Design Considering a Referral System", International Journal of Engineering, vol. 31, no. 2, 2018. Available: 10.5829/ije.2018.31.02b.22.

[5]"Computer Society Social Networking", Computer, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 15-15, 2020. Available: 10.1109/mc.2019.2959918.

[6]M. McKnight, "IOT, Industry 4.0, Industrial IOT… Why connected devices are the future of design", KnE Engineering, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 197, 2017. Available: 10.18502/keg.v2i2.615.

[7]H. Alizadeh and A. Zúquete, "Traffic classification for managing Applications’ networking profiles", Security and Communication Networks, vol. 9, no. 14, pp. 2557-2575, 2016. Available: 10.1002/sec.1516.

[8]"Technology Requirements: Find Computer, Software, Internet & Email Requirements | Purdue Global", Purdue Global, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.purdueglobal.edu/admissions/technology-requirements/.

[9]F. Coyle, "Wireless Constraints | The Wireless Web | InformIT", Informit.com, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=167918&seqNum=4.

[10]B. Wiederhold, "What Can Behavioral Healthcare Learn from Digital Medicine?", Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, vol. 20, no. 12, pp. 725-726, 2017. Available: 10.1089/cyber.2017.29092.bkw.