Design of Hospital Network System

The use of personal computers (PCs) and local area networks (LAN) has become a common practice in the improvement of any institution services. As a result, this project aims to design a network system for a hospital. This will involve the creation of an interconnected system of computers and servers throughout the three buildings, each of the buildings have five floors and every floor has 10 rooms for doctors and patients. There will be wards where the internet points will be located. The server will be located in one of the buildings[A1] . This implementation will integrate various departments and operations of the hospital. This report will demonstrate the procedures as well as the requirements needed for the process to be completed.[A2]

Hardware Requirement

Different network devices play a different role when it comes to the design of a network system. These devices also work in different segments where they perform crucial and unique work. With the hospital having different departments, the different workload will be created on the network, and therefore the network should be designed around the usage and the type of user requirements for effective and smooth operation. However, the use of a LAN system will permit data communication within the entire facility by pulling together various resources such as computers, servers, and printers. These elements will be linked by a transmission media such as a transmission cable. Therefore, the hardware component that will be used in the design of this network includes servers and PCs/workstations, cabling and connectors such as coaxial cable, RJ-45 connector, and Unshielded Twisted Paper (UTP), routers and others network devices such as Bridges/switches hub.

The hospital will have three servers, which will be located in a designated server room. This will provide the hospital with services ranging from virus protection, application and collaboration tools and message. Cisco has become one of the leading design manufacturers of mission-critical appliance servers. The hospital can take advantage of the Cisco UCS C240 M4 Rack Server which can be deployed as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) or a standalone (Lucas). Switches allow the interconnection of hardware cabling throughout the LAN and thus permit data flow. There will be a total of 10 routers and another 45 switches as shown in the network diagram below.

These will be used on each floor to connect the workstation computers. The switches that will be used will depend on the number of ports that they can hold. The hospital can use Avaya Ethernet Routing Switch 2550T-PWR that comes with 48 ports. Repeaters will ensure that all the three building in the facility receive a good network connection. Repeaters are used to extended the network coverage area, service remote nodes and or propagate a weak or broken signal. The hardware requirements will be as follows:

4 Routers, one switch per building (Cisco 1941 with the Cisco IOS)

20 Switches (Cisco 2969 with IOS[A3] release 15.0)[A4]

4 Pc one for every building

200 m Ethernet and serial cables.

Types of cables

The networking design will be achieved by using the Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable that is commonly known as Ethernet cable to connect the computers with the network. The use of this cable will guarantee fast data flow over the maximum supported distance. However, the type of UTP used will also determine the rate of data flow (Meyers). For this facility, CAT-5e or CAT-6 since they are of good quality and allow the speed of up to 1000mbps over the long run. These will also be fitted with RJ-45 connectors on both ends. Each ward will have three network points while each small room will be cabled with two network points.

Name and specification of the server

The facility will also be equipped with HP pavilion desktop computers on convenient workstations. These computers will have the latest operating system (Windows 10 Home 64). Others specifications will include 12 GB memory, and 1 TB HDD storage, 7th generation Intel Core i5 processor, Intel HD graphic 630, a 27 diagonal FHD IPS display and a DVD writer. Other devices that will be used in different workstation include printers and fingerprint scanners among others

Network Topology

The facility’s network will be built around a central archive/server in hybrid topology in which all departments will be connected through the Ethernet data connection, which will depend on the role and sophistication requirement. For instance, the departments will be joined by either a star topology or a bus topology while within the department a ring topology will be employed to connect all the computers. The hybrid topology will guarantee maximum data flow with department although there will be restrictions.

Netsim Network design emulator

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Network design configuration

Network configuration involves the setting of network control, operation, and flow to support the communication of the network. The process encompasses multiple configuration and setup process on the network software, hardware, and other supporting components.[A5] [A6]

After the installation of the hardware and cables, the next step will involve the configuration of the switches and router (Nikolaidis 4-5). This process will require a network access and a valid IP address for the switch. The switch will use Command Syntax Help to get the list of commands, parameters or keywords, which are available.  In the addressing schemes, RIPv2 is used in routing all the IP addresses which available in the small networks. RIPv2 was used because it offers a classless routing protocol. The network will have its automatic summarization disabled and a CLI interface will be used in displaying important info about networking. [A7] [A8]

Network device configurations

a. Switch configuration:

- set hostname as your family name

S1#configure terminal

S1(config)#hostname family_name

S1(config)#exit

- set system clock to 29th August 2018 5:00 pm

Switch# clock set 17:00:00 29 Aug 2018

- display the name of the file and version of IOS

Switch#show version

- display the name of the interfaces

Switch#show interface fastethernet 0/18

b. Router configuration

- set hostname as your family name

Router(config)#hostname FamilyName

R1(config)#

- set system clock to 20th September 2018 4:45pm

router# clock set 16:45:00 Sept 20 2018

Router> show clock

- display the name of the file and version of IOS

R2#show version

- display the name of the interfaces

R2#show ip interface brief

Works cited

Lucas, Michael W. Cisco Routers For The Desperate. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2004. Print.

Meyers, Mike. CompTIA Network+ Exam Guide[A9] . New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.[A10]

Nikolaidis, I. “Cisco IP Routing [Book Review].” IEEE Network 16.2 (2002): 4-5. Web.

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