PILOT PROJECT FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF WIRELESS ACCESS NETWORK IN ALBERT SCHOOL

PILOT PROJECT FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF WIRELESS ACCESS NETWORK IN ALBERT SCHOOL

Pilot project for implementation of wireless access network in albert school

You are the technical consultant to the Education department of NSW that currently has 200 schools under its administration. Most of the schools are of similar type and requirements for example: have around 500 students per school, 50 staff, online education programs, video conferencing facility between staff members across different campuses.

Many of the schools do not have adequate wireless coverage Consider one such school in the NSW school system called Albert school that the NSW Education department wants to use it as a pilot project to provide cost effective wireless access.

In Albert school currently there is no provision for wireless access to the campus network and Internet. The students and staff have made repeated demands to the school principal to have wireless access to the Albert school network and Internet. As the school often gets visitors and parents so this will also allow them to gain access to the wireless network by using their own laptop Đoŵputer.  The  sĐhool’s priŶĐipal  also  is  eager  to have a wireless network that should provide support for visitors and secure access to resources for the staff.

You have been assigned to help Albert school to have a wireless network and being a pilot project you will be making use of the experience that you will gain from it in other NSW schools as well. Some of the challenges that you face are with respect to the cost, security, vendor selection, implementation and performance.

One of the security issue faced by the school is that signal transmitted by the access point (AP) could also be transmitted outside the school building. This could then be used by hackers to gain access to the school internal network and resources. Another issue that may arise in the event of poor security measures is that the visitors to the school could access the resources of the staff. Rogue APs is also a concern to the school principal as well as the type of content accessed. The principal also wants the details  of  the  studeŶt;sͿ ǁho ǀiolate  the  sĐhool’s poliĐies  ǁith  regards  the usage policy to  be immediately logged so that after auditing action can be taken against the offending student(s). Some of the studeŶts  also use USB ŵoďile  ďroadďaŶd ŵodeŵ  to ďLJpass  the sĐhool’s Ŷetǁork  aĐĐess control and content access policies. This may pose as a security risk as well.

The IT team of the Education department has recommended you to use the RADIUS server for authentication purposes in the school. The school principal wants you to create an experimental testbed to demonstrate its usefulness to him and the school staff.

You are also faced with the challenge of the architecture that you need to have for Albert school i.e. whether to have it distributed or centralised. Cost of the overall network including maintenance needs should be kept as low as possible because of the budgetry constraints of the Education department.

Apart from the RADIUS server demonstration you have to make several recommendations to the school for all aspects of the network.

Note: You also need to undertake a serious literature research on tools, security equipment required and any issues that may arise.

You should address the following tasks in your report.  You are required to perform detailed literature review on hardware/software, security and other issues.

Group member one:

      Explain the different ways by which you could keep the costs low for the Albert school wireless network

      Explain the ways by which you could meet the security requirements of the school including preventing visitors from accessing the internal netǁork of the sĐhool’s staff.

      How would you restrict the range of the wireless signal so that it does not appear outside the school building? What are the advantages and disadvantages of your methods?

Group member two:

      Create and discuss the experimental setup for the RADIUS server authentication in the above case study with the help of figures.

    What type of architecture would you choose – Centralised or Distributed? Justify your answer.

      What type of tools would you use for implantation of the wireless network? Justify their selection.

Group member three:

      What reĐoŵŵeŶdatioŶs  LJou  ǁould  ŵake  to the sĐhool’s priŶĐipal  iŶ proǀidiŶg  Đost  effeĐtiǀe coverage, antenna type, number of APs, minimising network drops, allocation of frequencies of the APs, signal measurement.

      Write a report that includes the following sections: executive summary, introduction, work of Group members 1 and 2, plan of your implementation along with figure, your recommendations and conclusions.

Marking Components and Criteria: Marking Components:

Marking Criteria: