Assignment 1

Network Design

Applying a Methodology to Network Design

Case Study 1: ACMC Hospital Network Upgrade

This case study analyzes the network infrastructure of Acme County Medical
Center (ACMC) Hospital, a fictitious small county hospital in the United States.
This same case study is used throughout the remainder of the book so that you
can continue to evaluate your understanding of the concepts presented.

Case Study General Instructions

Use the scenarios, information, and parameters provided at each task of the
ongoing case study. If you encounter ambiguities, make reasonable assumptions
and proceed. For all tasks, use the initial customer scenario and build on the
solutions provided thus far. You can use any and all documentation, books,
white papers, and so on.
In each step, you act as a network design consultant. Make creative proposals
to accomplish the customer’s business needs. Justify your ideas when they
differ from the provided solutions. Use any design strategies you feel are
appropriate. The final goal of each case study is a paper solution.

In this case study, you develop a high-level design for the ACMC Hospital
network.

Case Study Scenario

This case study analyzes the network infrastructure of ACMC Hospital, a
fictitious small county hospital. The hospital has provided you with a short
description of the current situation and its plans. As a network designer, it is your
job to identify all the organization’s requirements and datathat will allow you to
provide an effective solution.

Organizational Facts
ACMC Hospital is a medium-sized regional hospital located in Acme County,
with approximately 500 staff members supporting up to 1000 patients. The
hospital is interested in updating its main facility (which uses equipment from
various vendors) in its Layer 2 campus. You are meeting to define the client’s
requirements.

ACMC has 15 buildings in total on the campus, plus 5 small remote clinics.
There are two main hospital buildings and an auxiliary building. The two main
 buildings have seven floors each, with four wiring closets per floor. The
auxiliary building—the Children’s Place—is connected to the two main
buildings; the switches from these three buildings are connected with fiber
connectionsin a ring. The Children’s Place has three floors, with three wiring
closets per floor. The other 12 campus buildings are smaller office and support
facilities, with 10 to 40 people per building, located on one or two floors.

The network architect is new to the hospital. The hospital is aggressively

expanding its clinic and alternative emergency room presence within Acme
County. Due to population growth in general, plans to enlarge the main campus
are also under way. The hospital is doing fairly well financially. It wants to
selectively deploy cutting-edge technology for better patient care and high
productivity.Management is tired of network downtime and slowness affecting
patient care. Network manageability is important because ACMC has a
tradition of basing operations on small support staffs with high productivity.
ACMC’s upgrade timeframe is 6 to 12 months.

Current Situation
The current network uses inexpensive switches from several vendors, purchased
over time. They comply with various standards, depending on when they were
purchased. The switches are not SNMP-manageable, although a small amount
of information is available from each switch via the web or command-line
interface.

Within each of the three main buildings is a main switch. One floor switch from
each floor connects to the main switch. The other switches connect either
directly to the floor switch or viaa daisy chain of switches, depending on which
was most convenient at the time.

The small outlying buildings have one or two 24-port switches. One of these
connects back to one of the main building switches via fiber. If there is a second
switch, it connects via the first switch.
Currently, the staff VLAN spans the entire campus. No Layer 3 switching is present.
The addressspace is 172.16.0.0 /16. Addresses are coded sequentially into PCs as they
are deployed. Staff members have been meaning to deploy DHCP but have not had
the time.

The applications that the organization is currently running include standard office
applications, plus some specialized medical tools running over IP. Radiology,
Oncology, and other departments do medical imaging. As these departments acquire
new tools, they are adding real-time motion to the highly detailed medical images,
requiring large amounts of bandwidth. All the new servers arecapable of using Gigabit
or Gigabit EtherChannel connectivity.

Many servers are currently located in various closets. Many lack uninterrupted power
supplies orproper environmental controls. A staff member has to roll a tape backup cart
to each server closetto back up each server. There are about 40 centrally located servers
in one raised floor “server room,” and 30 other servers distributed around the campus
near their users. The server room takes up part of the first floor of Main Building 1,
along with the cafeteria and other non-networked areas.

Hospital Support Services has been experimenting with workstations on wheels

(WoW). Movingthese and plugging them into an Ethernet jack is just not working very
well.
The WAN uses 56-kbps links to three of the remote clinics and dialup connectivity to
the other two. The one router uses static routing that was configured by a previous
network designer.

The staff members have frequently complained about slow response times. There
appears to be severe congestion of the LAN, especially at peak hours. The staff
provided you with a copy of its recent network diagram, which is shown in Figure 1.
 Figure 1. ACMC Network Diagram Provided by the Customer

Clinics

You believe that the current situation does not provide for future growth, high reliability,
and easeof management.

Plans and Requirements

The introduction of new applications will result in an additional load on the links to
the remote clinics. The expected tighter integration and growth of remote offices will
even further increase the traffic load on the WAN links. The hospital would like to
upgrade the WAN infrastructure to provide sufficient bandwidth between the remote
clinics and headquarters and, at the same time, find a solution for better convergence
during network failures. The company is aware of the drawbacks of its current IP
addressing scheme and is seeking a better solution.

The hospital must comply with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Case Study Questions
Complete the following steps:

Step 1: Document ACMC’s requirements.

Step 2: Document any information that you think is missing from the case study
scenario and that you consider necessary for the design.
Before beginning the design, you will need this information. Assume that you have
talked to the customer about the missing information, and document any assumptions
you make. You don’t need to assume that all the missing information is provided by the
customer; some might never be available. However, you do need to assume answers
for your critical questions.

Step 3: Outline the major design areas that you feel need to be addressed when
designing the solution for this scenario. List the tasks, and provide a brief comment for
each.
 Case Study Answers
1. The following table summarizes ACMC’s requirements.
Requirement Comments
Structural cabling
High availability, redundancy
Higher campus speeds, at least Gigabit Ethernet Medical image files are very large
core
Higher WAN speeds
More uniform WAN
IPsec virtual private network for teleworkers Although this is not a stated
requirement, it would be useful and is
common in today’s networks
Designated server farm, improved “data center”
area
Wireless for WoWs
Network management capabilities
DHCP
Scalable IP addressing scheme
QoS-capable equipment To allow for future delay-sensitive
applications (such as IP telephony)
without replacing network equipment
 2. The following table summarizes information missing from the scenario and the
relatedassumptions that we made (obviously, your assumptions may be different).
Missing Item
Bandwidth utilization
Are there any plans for IP
telephony? Video?
Videoconferencing?
Multimedia?
What are the security requirements?
Is there wireless already on site?
Are there any plans for wireless?
Have any specific wireless
requirements been identified,
especially related to security?
What are the QoS requirements?
Are there any security cameras in
the hospital?
Are there any mobility
requirements for staff?
Is there any information about
the application WAN
requirements or usage?
What current network
managementtools are in place?
Does ACMC headquarters have
Internet access today? Do the remote
WAN sitesrequire Internet access?
Comments and Assumptions
There is no bandwidth utilization data, because
much of the equipment is not manageable.
There are many 100-Mbps trunks between
switches. The servers are on 100-Mbps ports.
A version of a network analysis tool is available. It
indicates that some uplinks have 80% to 100%
utilization. Therefore, assume that there is
congestion.
All of these are possible in the two-to-five-year time
frame.
HIPAA compliance is a big driver, so the hospital
needs “good security.”
Several departments have wireless “experiments,”
but the hospital suspects they are not adequately
secured. The network team has not had time to
investigate the use of wireless.
The hospital is currently using VoD for some
training and continuing education. IP multicast
might reduce bandwidth used and make more
efficient use of servers. Future IP telephony, video,
and so forth will add further QoS requirements.
There are no cameras yet, but the hospital already
has coax cable in place.
Yes, secure mobile access is a real need. However,
ACMC recognizes that its network has other
problems that need to be corrected before this can be
done.
There is no data because of the unmanageable
equipment and lack of time.
An older tool called Ethereal is the only tool in
place (the current version is Wireshark).
Internet access requirements are not yet clear.
 What are the future plans for a
server farm? Will the servers be
consolidated to one location?
Where will that be?
What type of WAN is currently in
use?
Assume that the servers will all move to the server
room in Main Building #1.
The three existing 56-kbps circuits are point-to-point
links.

Missing Item Comments and Assumptions

Is there a WAN backup? There is no WAN backup today.
Are there any technical Frame Relay and Multiprotocol Label Switching are also
constraints for WAN available to the remote clinics.
availability at the remote
clinics?
What is the budget The budget is not clear; assume approximately $500,000.
available for the
upgrade?
Who is responsible for the Mr. Jones is the network architect, and Ms. Smith is the MIS
network? manager.
Are there any business Medical imaging is identified as the most critical
constraints, such as application.
policies and goals? What
is the criticality of
applications?
3. The following are the major design areas to be addressed:
Step 1 Identify the relevant network applications, their logical connectivity
requirements, and the services required as part of the initial design.
Step 2 Divide the network into modules.
Step 3 Identify the scope of the design to decide which modules are to be
redesigned.
Step 4 Identify design alternatives for each module, including the following:
a. Redesign the campus LAN: The current campus LAN is shared and
interconnects three buildings. Because there is no redundancy, the
designer needs to entirely redesign the campus, including the
placementof servers.
b. Redesign the IP addressing scheme: The flat addressing scheme and
static routes are not desirable features in a scalable growing network.
Newhierarchical addressing is required.
c. Introduce a new routing protocol: The hospital is aware of the draw-
backs of static routes. The designer should implement a dynamic
routingprotocol that is more scalable and that better fits the planned
hierarchicaladdressing scheme.
d. Upgrade the WAN links: The upgrade of the WAN links is essential
because, according to the company, the current bandwidth seems
insuffi-cient. The introduction of new applications along with the
existing appli-cations will result in a higher load on the WAN links.
After the design is complete, the implementation will be planned, and the
design will be implemented.
 This is your Assignment

Case Study 2: ACMC Hospital Modularity

Case Study General Instructions

Use the scenarios, information, and parameters provided at each task of the ongoing case study. If
you encounter ambiguities, make reasonable assumptions and proceed. For all tasks, use the initial
customer scenario and build on the solutions provided thus far. You can use any and all
documentation, books, white papers, and so on.
In each step, you act as a network design consultant. Make creative proposals to accomplish the
customer’s business needs. Justify your ideas when they differ from the provided solutions. Use
any design strategies you feel are appropriate. The final goal of each case study is a paper solution.

In this case study, you apply the Cisco Enterprise Architecture to the ACMC Hospital network
requirements and develop a high-level view of the planned network hierarchy. Complete the
following steps:

Step 1 Consider each of the functional areas of the Cisco Enterprise Architecture:
• Enterprise Campus: Including the Campus Infrastructure module
(composed of the Campus Core layer, the Building Distribution layer,
and the Building Access layer) and the Server farm module
• Enterprise Edge: Including the E-commerce module, the Internet
Connectivity module, the WAN and MAN and Site-to-Site VPN module,
and the Remote Access and VPN module
• Enterprise Branch
• Enterprise Data Center
• Enterprise Teleworker
Mark up the existing network diagram, provided in Figure 1, indicating
where each of the modules would be at a high level.
Figure 1: Existing ACMC Hospital Network

Clinics

Step 2 List some key considerations or functions for each of the modules in the
Cisco Enterprise Architecture. Indicate whether each module is used in the
ACMC Hospital network.
Step 3 Since the time initial discussions with ACMC occurred, the following
additional requirements have surfaced:
• The staff needs Internet access for purchasing supplies and
reviewingresearch documents and new medical products.
• There has been some discussion about allowing employees
totelecommute.
• ACMC has a web server for a patient communications and community
relations service called “Text a Nurse.” This for-fee service allows a
patient to send a text message to the hospital, requesting medical
advice.
 How does this new information change the design? Incorporate the changes
into your high-level design, and update the list of modules and
considerations.
Step 4 Which of the following infrastructure or network services are immediately
applicable to your design?
• Security services
• Voice services
• Wireless
• Network management
• High availability
• QoS
• Multicast
Are there specific locations or modules where some of these services are
particularly relevant?
Step 5 Indicate where redundancy should be supported in the design