Cisco Based Academic Research Network Post ARNe

I also did extra research on Cisco’s routing platforms and the cost factor. Additionally, I did a lot of research on supporting the IP routing and the WAN topologies. In the building of the ARNe WAN core at the main site, the Cisco 2811 series was used as the core router while the 1841 series were used at the remote centers. Each of the remote routers each location was interconnected to the main router at the main site. Interface modules listed in the proposal part were used for interconnection between the Data Service Unit (DSU) and the Channel Service Unit (CSU) in each location. This is attributed to the fact that Cisco hardware such as cables and other devices are protocol specific (Hucaby, McQuerry, Whitaker & Hucaby, 2010). Cisco UCS domains have the capabilities to coexist with other UCSM domains and organizations can therefore grow their own infrastructure thus UCS central is highly recommended (Della Maggiora & Doherty, 2004).

Also its best practice for network availability to either use NIC teaming or hardware failover but not use them concurrently. Additionally, manageability problems can be avoided by use of virtualization and consolidating of systems (Cisco UCS Deployment Best Practices, 2015). Routers are protocol specific and must support the network layer protocol used by the packets. The project team created prototypes according to the user needs and redefined their designs. This process of redesigning the prototype was repeated numerous times during the development of the ARNe to ensure optimal design and customer experience. The project team used the components of the previous ARNe to focus on the immediate customer needs. All the steps in the RAD process were followed. First, the project team gathered all the requirements including all the upgrades that were needed in the network, the prototype of the network was developed and the users (students) were told to give their feedback.

The scalability of the network was achieved through the use of modern and automated networking hardware and software. The Cisco ISRs were designed to provide adequate accommodation of a lot of users simultaneously. Enhancing networking among academicians, researchers and other stakeholders to ensure enrichment of the vast knowledge base High performance was achieved by having the routers in the core ARNe that received process and managed traffic from each LANs before forwarding the packets. This was done by configuring the Cisco routers for high performance. The major configuring method was the Command Line Interface. However, there were differences in the start dates and completion dates of some of the deliverables. For example it took two weeks in building of the core-layer platform; the due date of completion was 11-11-2018 but was actually completed on 18/18/2018.

The delay was attributed to financial constraints in purchasing the necessary equipment which were costly. This delay also affected subsequent due start dates for subsequent deliverables but did not affect the completion date of the entire project. For the EGRIP protocols there was need to configure them to enable IP routing among the core routers for optimal performance which took more time than anticipated. The Cisco routing protocol chosen EGIRP was capable of sending routing updates during failure convergence hence made it a good framework for evaluating transfer of packets between the networks. The transmission and processing of requests and packets and updates were improved with the Cisco hardware chosen. The network provided the students a platform to share academic materials in a fast and reliable manner. After its deployment the policies for sustainable ARNe were documented.

Project Deliverables Cisco1841 integrated Series WAN ring topology References Cisco Systems. Hucaby, D. McQuerry, S. Whitaker, A. Hucaby, D.  Cisco router configuration handbook.