Worchester Site Device and STP Configurations

   Worchester Site Device and STP Configurations & Boston Site Routing Protocol, Route Summarization and Topology Improvements

Table of Contents

1. Worchester Site Details and Challenges
2. Subnetting of Worchester Site Solution
3. Boston Site Protocol, Route Summarization, and Topology Improvements
4. Bibliography

1. Worchester Site Details and Challenges

I am now going to help xAcme’s system admins set up their Worchester Site. They have asked me to help properly subnet addressing blocks to accommodate the site’s VLAN sizes. I will have to consider challenges when structuring the subnets too large and/or too small during this process. For the system admins of xAcme to get a better understanding of the benefits of subnetting, they asked me “what is subnetting?” and “why do we want to subnet a network?”. These are fair questions to ask, so I quickly explained to them below.

What is Subnetting? – (1) Subnetting is short for “subnetwork”. We have one network for the company, and subnetting is the process of breaking the network down into smaller and more manageable pieces to allow easier flow of network traffic. For example, in layman’s terms, imagine you ordering a pizza. You get one whole round pizza.  You can’t eat one whole round pizza in one sitting. So, in order to easily manage and eat the pizza, you cut it into slices. The slices are like small subnetworks of the whole pizza which is the single main network.

Why do we want to subnet a network? – I told the xAcme system admins a lot of benefits to subnetting a network. (1) It can help increase security on the network. It can help with organization, by means of putting different departments or teams, on specific vlans. Subnetting will also help with performance of network speed. Breaking one huge single network into smaller subnetworks will help with congestion and easier flow of packets.

2. Subnetting Worchester Site Solution

Currently, there are four vlan’s being used at the Worchester site.  The vlan’s are Administrative with 30 devices, Server with 24 devices, Instructional with 215 devices, and faculty with 19 devices connected.  That is a total of 288 devices with room potential growth. Worchester has been allocated the IP address of 10.20.0.0/16.  This has a total of 65,534 host’s that can be used. For each vlan, I have left room for potential growth. I recommended putting each VLAN in its own subnet to the xAcme system admins. The reason is because it will help make it easier to manage and troubleshoot network problems in the future if the occur. 

List of Network Devices at Worchester

–          Cisco 2811 router

–          (2960) Switch 1 with 24 ports

–          (2960) Switch 2 with 24 ports

–          (2960) Switch 3 with 24 ports

–          Instructional VLAN, 215 devices attached

–          Faculty VLAN, 19 devices attached

–          Server VLAN, 24 devices attached

–          Administrative VLAN, 30 devices attached

Worchester Topology

3. Boston Site Protocol, Route Summarization, and Topology Improvements

BostonSite Details and Challenges

xAcme also has a Boston site. The system admins of the xAcme team have asked me to implement a routing protocol to manage networks within the Boston site topology as well as default routes to exit non-Boston traffic. The Boston site has three routers.

Routing Protocol:

As the network admin I must choose a routing protocol that will best fit Boston’s network infrastructure. I have chosen to implement OSPF (open shortest path first) as Boston’s routing protocol. Using OSPF will build and calculate the best route to take for packets being sent over the network. OSPF must be aware of its neighbor’s up and down state in order to pick the best path. (2)  Bellman-Ford algorithm also known as RIP is another routing protocol. It calculates the hops it takes to reach a subnet. (2) EIGRP (enhanced interior gateway routing protocol) is an enhanced distance-vector protocol. It combines OSPF and RIP. This was designed by cisco systems to help automate routing decisions and configs on a computer network. All the routers at Boston are Cisco however, I will not use the EIGRP. I have decided to go with OSPF because it scales better on large enterprise networks.

Summarization:

BRouter1

BRouter1#conf t

BRouter1(conf)#ip route 10.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 10.255.255.248

This is for static routes for all other 10.0.0.0 traffic

BRouter1(conf)#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 165.128.63.1

This is for the default routes

BRouter1(conf)#router ospf 100

BRouter1(conf-router)#network 10.10.255.253 0.0.0.3 area 0

BRouter1(conf-router)#network 10.10.255.249 0.0.0.3 area 0

BRouter1#exit

BRouter1# copy run start

BRouter2

BRouter2#conf t

BRouter2(conf)#router ospf 100

BRouter2(conf-router)#network 10.10.255.254 0.0.0.3 area 0

If I was to put in a second connection to Bostonrouter3

BRouter2(conf)#exit

BRouter2#

BRouter2 copy run start

BRouter3

BRouter3#conf t

BRouter3(conf)#router ospf 100

BRouter3(conf-router)#network 10.10.255.250 0.0.0.3 area 0

If I was to put in a second connection to Bostonrouter2

BRouter3(conf)#exit

BRouter3#

BRouter3 copy run start

Boston Topology

4. Bibliography

[1] B. Posey, “Subnetting to increase performance,” Subnetting to Increase Performance, Dec-2005. [Online]. Available: https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/feature/Subnetting-to-increase-performance. [Accessed: 10-Feb-2019].

[2] V. Hadjioannou, “On the Performance comparison of RIP, OSPF, IS-IS and EIGRP routing protocols,” [astro-ph/0005112] A Determination of the Hubble Constant from Cepheid Distances and a Model of the Local Peculiar Velocity Field, 25-Feb-2015. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.07133. [Accessed: 05-Feb-2019].

“TestOut LabSim”, Cdn.testout.com, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://cdn.testout.com/client-v5-1-10-551/startlabsim.html [Accessed: 6- Feb- 2019].