Need Some IT Insight

[lswhitecivic]

So I'm trying to work on this project for my Network Management Class. Basically the project is to design an NMS for an enterprise corporate network. We're supposed to use United Airlines. The great thing about this project is that I have no clue how United has built their data and voice networks. I asked the teacher how we are supposed to do this and he said basically to scale down their network to like 10 sites and make a mock network.

My problem is I really have no experience with enterprise level companies. For example the corporate headquarters is in Chicago so we plan to just make that the center of the network as well as the data center. But what sort of bandwidth do I need for an office with over 10,000 employees? I tried to get an average bandwidth usage from our users and then multiply that by 10,000 employees and I got a little over 100Mbps. So that would mean I would need at least a several T3s or an OC3 connection. So thats just one site.

Anyone have any experience working with enterprise level networks that could give me some insight on general practice?
Thanks for any help.

PS I work for a company with about 500 users in 5 offices so I really need help on this large scale design. I'm used to stuff like Cisco 1700 series routers not Enterprise 7600 Series.

 

[posol]

having 1 connection is a horrible idea.

you want multiple routes to everything.

we'll use 5 cities to make it easy

boston
nyc
la
chicago
miami



its not feasable to set up direct connections to every site from every site.... its just too much money sometimes.
so what you do is pick 2 routes

boston -> nyc -la
boston -> miami -> la
nyc-> miami -> chicago
nyc -> la ->chicago
if nyc goes down, boston can still reach la.
if la goes down, nyc can still hit chicago

all said and done, you get a nice spider web. i can't attempt to draw it in this post, but hopfully you get he idea.

 

[lswhitecivic]

Yeah I'm starting to realize that...and its starting to confuse me even more. That OC3 connection would probably be strictly internet access. We would then have MPLS WAN links connecting the offices. What speeds I should use for those I really don't know. I would guess the primary link would be something like a T3 and the secodary might be a half T3 or something.

 

[posol]

it all depends on your office. i have no idea what resources are where, and what kind of bandwidth they will need...

 

[Celerity]

Consumer grade ISP $25 package and VPN. Then a large arena where employees battle to the death for large file transfers.


I smell a Nobel in my future !

 

[Bob Vila]

For extra credit, don't forget to include a DR site (disaster recovery)