Documentation

Over the weekend, I looked at the project spreadsheet we have on Google Documents. This spreadsheet contains the Gantt Chart, which shows an overview of the project and each single task that is related to the project, and the Budget, which just shows the overview of funds planned and used on the entire project.

The Gantt Chart

The Gantt Chart went through several changes which also lead to the entire chart being widened. The row where the tasks were placed had been modified where each week had their days merged, so each week can be clearly defined on the actual chart. The heading was modified and cleaned up. A brief description on how to use the chart was added to the top and one of the tasks was renamed from 'Preparation of Report/Budget' to 'Documentation'. I felt the name change described the task at hand more than the original one.

Overview of the modified Gantt Chart.

The Budget

The budget went through minor changes relating only to the formatting and layout. Mostly changes to the size of the format, and the headings the tables are located under. The expenditure heading was removed entirely since there was already a heading for budget. The sub-heading Salary, was replaced with Work Hours due to it sounding a little better.



Overview of the budget prior to the changes.



With the table containing each of the tasks as well as planned hours, start dates and costs involving workers, has been modified to directly link to the tasks in the Gantt Chart. If tasks are renamed in the Gantt Chart, they will be renamed in the budget. Simplicity. The wage rate was moved to the right of the work hours table, whilst maintaining the link where changing the wage rate changes the costs involved.

Overview of the budget after the changes. Still a work in progress.







Creation of the Baratiwa Network Part 3.

After creating our general network for Baritiwa, we needed to set it up.

We created 4 local Vlans, with the Central switch as server and each floors switch as client. On the router, sub interfaces were created for each Vlan. 

The Students Vlan was the wireless network.

After creating the addressing scheme, we needed a way to distribute the addresses to users. For this, DHCP was required. On the router, a DHCP pool was created for each Vlan, feeding the addresses through the allocated ports on each switch and floor. The default gateway and addresses given to the switches were fixed because they should not change

The various computer were added on each floor to check that DHCP was working on the different Vlans.

Limitations of Packet Tracer

Part of the limitation of Packet Tracer is the available hardware of which you are able to use.

Although we are able to utilize standard switches on each floor (24 fast-ethernet ports, and 2 gigabit ports); This does not work when we require at least 5 'gig ports on the central switch for each of the floors.

To solve this problem we decided to use the empty Packet Tracer devices.

The empty switch allowed us to have up to 8 custom selected ports. In our network we used 5 gig connections (copper) for maximum speeds between the floors and a fiber optic connection to our router.

For the router, we also used a empty Packet Tracer device. We allowed 3 fiber connections; one to the central switch, one to the District network and one extra port is there for any future expansion.

Creation of the Baratiwa Network Part 2.

Next we had to create the school network on Packet Tracer.

We first threw together an ideal setup of our network using equipment available on packet tracer.

This was designed to have as little latency between the switches on each floor and using the equipment commonly available in the Cisco software.

However, this design proved impractical as we had yet to cover Ether-channel.

We also discovered some limitation of Packet Tracer, as discussed in the separate post.

The simplified network.

We then decided to create a more stream-lined, working network; Of which we can easily modify and improve in the future.

It was decided that it is best to use the empty Packet tracer devices as this allowed more control over what we connected and closer to an ideal real network.

Creation of the Baratiwa Network Part 1.

For site 3 of the Network project, we only needed to create two zones. One the District network, and secondly the Baratiwa Network.

In this school network, we had to design a network in one building with 5 floors. Within this school network we must accommodate a large amount of users.

On the wireless network we must be able to handle at least 500 students, as well as various amounts of wired users on each floor shown on the image on the left.

Etherchannel

since we have the servers to look after i looked into etherchannel and am just playing around with it on PT  hopefully Tavita learned about it too over the weekend

Report

Attempting to create a skeleton report and will begin on the introduction today. I will show you guys when I finish so we can comment and modify.