case study 187

Mr. Thompson is the CIO of Consulting Expert.  Consulting Expert is a professional services company that provides programmers to enterprise clients.  The  company  has  a  headquarters  in  New York  and  a  regional  training  centers   in  Houston, Maryland and Denver.  More  than  40  small  sales  offices  are   sparsely  dispersed  throughout  the  United  States  and   Europe.  Field sales representatives, management, and  Consultants  use  the  network  to   access  back office  application, e mail,  time  and  expense  system,  and  other  internal  websites.

The  Regional offices  are   connected  in  a  hierarchical  mesh  using  Frame  Relay  as  a  WAN technology.  They are using EIGRP as a routing protocol.  Mr. Thompson mentions that they are looking for ways to reduce local loop and Frame Relay permanent   virtual circuit [PVC] WAN Costs.  He  wants  a  network  design  that  uses  a  less cost  WAN  technology  to   the  remote   sales  offices.  Table 1 1 lists the remote Site requirements.

Table 1 1

Regional Office	Bandwidth Requirements
Denver	1.2 Mbps
Houston	1.2 Mbps
Maryland	800 Kbps

Use the table below to calculate cost of each technology and recommend the best cost effective WAN technology.The Denver and Houston sites would have large bandwidth speeds to accommodate the remote site bandwidth. The solution would also need to accommodate home office and Internet dial up users. The CIO mentioned that solution should be verified before implementation.

Table 2 2

Technology	Speed	Price per month	Monthly Cost
Leased Line	T1 or T3	$600 for each T1, $8000 for the T3
Frame Relay T1 Frame Relay T3	T1 or T3	$450, for T1 $7000 for T3 Plus CIR	Add $100 Extra cost for PVC in Frame Relay
MPLS, VPN, T1 and T3	T1 or T3	$500, for T1 $8500 for T3
High speed business Internet Service T3 Internet	6Mbps downstream, and 768 kbps upstream T3	$90 $4000

Please read Super Consulting case study and then respond and discuss the following topics.

1. What remote access technology would you propose to Mr. Thompson that would enable users to seamlessly access   the   back office systems and reduce WAN coasts?
2. What   local access  technology  could  you   used  to  reduce  access  coasts  at  the  remote  offices for providing access to telecommuter?