Marks: 30% of the Total Assessment for the Course
Submit your assignment to Blackboard Task 2. The submission link will be open a week before the due date. Please follow the submission instructions in Blackboard.
The assignment will be marked out of a total of 100 marks and forms 30% of the total assessment for the course. ALL assignments will be checked for plagiarism by SafeAssign system provided by Blackboard automatically.
Refer to your Course Outline or the Course Web Site for a copy of the “Student Misconduct, Plagiarism and Collusion” guidelines.
Assignment submission extensions will only be made using the official Faculty of Arts, Business and Law Guidelines.
Requests for an extension to an assignment MUST be made to the course coordinator prior to the date of submission and requests made on the day of submission or after the submission date will only be considered in exceptional circumstances.
Background Information: Credit Crunch
Credit Crunch (CC) has been operating a debt recovery service for banks and other financial lending institutions for 10 years and is looking to upgrade its system.
Due to the collection of personal and financial information, data maintained by CC is considered highly sensitive. As in any business payroll and financial information is considered sensitive to those inside as well as outside the organisation.
Currently, CC leases a floor in Sydney for its head office, staff and (security) are:
- 3 x Executive Managers (Full Access)
- 5 x Accounting /HRM (Access to Internet, Microsoft Exchange, Financial System, and Payroll System)
- 5 x Account Managers (Access to Internet, Microsoft Exchange, Customer Relation Management System and Debt Recovery system)
- 2 x Information Communication Technology (Full Access)
- 3 x Call Centre Supervisors (Microsoft Exchange, Debt Recovery System)
- 80 x Call Centre Operators working shifts on 40 workstations (Microsoft Exchange, *Limited Debt Recovery System)
Executive Managers and Account Managers may bring the own devices and connect to the network via a wired or wireless connection. All other staff work only on wired workstations.
The core system of the business is the debt recovery system (DRS). The DRS contains two separate software systems operating on different servers:
- Predictive Dialler Software (PDS) – is connected to the company’s telephony board and makes calls to debtors based on a list of phone numbers and debtor ID’s imported each morning. When a call is answered it’s forwarded to a phone at an available operator’s workstation and a message is sent via DCOM of the Debtor ID to the client of the Debtor Database System at that workstation.
- Debtor Database Software – is a client / server DBMS. When a client receives a DCOM message from the PDS it requests data from the server via TCP/IP pertaining to the Debtor ID. The server sends the requested data to the client who modifies and saves the data. The operator then selects whether they are ready to receive more calls or take a break and the message is sent back via DCOM to the PDS. The server uses timed backup to send modifications of the database at regular intervals to an offsite location via TCP/IP.
Given that the person being called has already answered the phone prior to it being passed through to the operator, time is critical, both in terms of the operator answering the phone and having the debtor’s data accessible to the operator.
- Limited Debt Recovery System – Call Centre Operators should only have access to records forwarded to them by the server but not access to the full debtor’s database.
End of Case Study
Assignment Task
You have been engaged as a member of a network planning team by a member of the executive management of Credit Crunch to prepare a business report on a network plan for their business. Although this is a business report it is also an academic assignment. All theory must be referenced, and all arguments put forward, supported by scholarly references.
As your target audience includes executive businesspeople, who have extensive business experience, but may have limited ICT knowledge, the report needs to explain why your recommended networking technologies/solutions are the most appropriate and how they will benefit their business. You may need to compare your recommendations with other available technologies.
Specifically, your report must address the questions in topic 1 and one of the questions in Topic 2.
Topic 1 – Network Upgrade
Many of the networking devices are ageing and management has inquired about upgrading the entire network infrastructure. Whist their ISP still operates on IPv4 (IP 120.154.191.1/24) they are keen for the new network to operate (at least internally) on IPv6.
Topic 1.1 Structured Cabling Plan
You are to prepare a new cabling plan for their existing operations. You need to explain the key components included, as well as the recommendations for cable types and connecting devices.
Topic 1.2 Network Topology Diagram
You are to use Cisco Packet Tracer to build the proposed topology and include a screenshot of the topology in your report.
Topic 1.3 IP Addressing
Based on your topology you are to prepare an IPv6 addressing plan. This plan should address the range of IP addresses for any subnets you define and how the system will manage IP addressing. Your discussion may include, but not limited to DHCPv6, switching tables, routing tables.
Topic 2 – Choose ONE of the following topics
Management have also requested information about the following topics. As part of the networking design team you can choose which question to address.
Topic 2.1 Additional Site
Credit Crunch is looking to open a branch office in Melbourne with similar numbers of staff with the exception that Accounting / HRM staff will remain in Sydney.
Management have asked for your recommendations for connecting the two sites.
How would your response change if they decided to open a branch in Singapore?
Topic 2.2 VOIP
The current system uses a telephony system which costs considerable money in call costs. Management have asked you to investigate using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) for its call centre. What issues should management consider in deciding? What are your recommendations? Does this alter your proposed network topology?
Topic 2.3 Redundant Servers
Currently the office runs one database server for it’s DRS. If the server crashes (which it’s known to do) all work stops until the server and workstations are rebooted. Management have asked your opinion on running two or more database servers. In terms of networking how might this be achieved? How will you achieve database consistency (you may want to investigate CAP Theorem)? How does this alter your proposed network topology?
Report Format
Your report should be no less than 1,500 words and it would be best to be no longer than 2,500 words long.
The formal technical report usually contains many different sections. The following outline is recommended for this assignment:
- Title page
- Executive Summary
- Tables of Contents
- Table of Figures, Table of Tables (as needed)
- 0 Introduction
- 0 Network Upgrade
- 1 Structured Cabling Plan
- 2 Network Topology Diagram o 2.3 IP Addressing
- 0 Additional Site, VOIP, or Redundant Servers
- 0 Conclusion & Recommendations
- Reference List
The report must be formatted using the following guidelines:
- Paragraph text 12-point Calibri single line spacing
- Headings Arial in an appropriate type size
- Margins 2.5cm on all sides
- Title Page is not to contain headers, footers, or page numbering, but must contain report title, course code, course title, student name and student number as the report’s author.
- Header is to display the Report Title (excluding the title page)
- Footer to display your name and the page number (excluding the title page)
- Page numbering
- Executive summary to the last page of Table of Contents / Figures / Tables to use roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv) commencing with the executive summary as
Page i.
- Introduction and onwards to use conventional numerals (1, 2, 3, 4) starting at page 1 from the introduction
- The report is to be created as a single Microsoft Word document (version 2007 or later). No other format is acceptable.
- The report must use the built-in features of Microsoft Word to create page numbers, section numbers, citations, cross referencing of sections, figures and tables, table of contents, table of figures, table of tables, and reference list.
Refer to the following references for details on report structures:
Summers, J. & Smith, B., 2014, Communication Skills Handbook, 4th Ed, Wiley, Australia.
Referencing
The report is to include (at least 5) appropriate references and these references should follow the Harvard method of referencing. Note that ALL references should be from journal articles,
conference papers, technical papers, recognized experts in the field or vendors’ and service providers’ websites.
Marking
The assignment will be marked according to the marking sheet at Appendix A. The following guidelines will be used in marking each section of the assignment:
| 100% | 90% | 75% | 65% | 50% | 25% | 0 |
| Outstanding: | High | Distinction: | Credit: | Pass: | Fail: | Not |
| Distinction: | Submitted: | |||||
| An outstanding | An excellent | More than | Competently | Satisfactorily | Did not | No attempt |
| attempt – well | piece of work | competently | meets the | meets the | sufficiently | made or |
| formatted and | that meets all | meets the | criteria as | criteria. | meet the | different from |
| professionally | the specified | criteria | specified with | criteria to | what is | |
| presented | criteria with | specified with | few minor | pass. | acceptable | |
| piece of work. | very minor | only minor | mistakes or | |||
| omissions or | mistakes or | omissions. | ||||
| mistakes | omissions. |
Submission
The completed assignment is to be submitted to Blackboard Task 2 by the due date of 11:59pm Friday, Week 12.
The assignment will be assessed according to the marking sheet. Late submission will be penalised according to the policy in the course outline. Please note Saturday and Sunday are included in the count of days late.
Assignment Return and Release of Grades
Assignment grades will be available on the course website in 10 to 15 working days after the due date. An electronic assignment marking sheet will be available at this time.
Where an assignment is undergoing investigation for alleged plagiarism or collusion the grade for the assignment and the assignment will be withheld until the investigation has concluded.
Assignment Advice
This assignment will take several weeks to complete and will require a good understanding of data science and management for successful completion. It is imperative that students take heed of the following points in relation to doing this assignment:
- Ensure that you clearly understand the requirements for the assignment – what must be done and what are the deliverables.
- If you do not understand any of the assignment requirements – Please ASK the course your tutor.
- Each time you work on any aspect of the assignment reread the assignment requirements to ensure that what is required is clearly understood.
- There are 10 marks for Report Formatting. You are ICT students so it is expected that you can format a word document, so these marks should be a gift. Don’t be embarrassed if you’re having difficulty ASK your tutor.
- In practice, you often have clients that you can converse with to clarify queries you may have, which is ideal. Likewise, you are often given system briefs and must make recommendations about system features based on assumptions and your expertise. In this assignment you’re probably going to need to make assumptions, if you do make sure you note these.
- Topic 2 was designed in lines with the university policy of self-directed learning, there’s no best question to answer, simply choose one that is of interest to you and answer to the best of your ability.
- There are no marks in the marking sheet for referencing. Be aware that arguments not supported by references will earn few marks if any. Theory presented without references may result in an academic misconduct charge. Whenever you write something you should think how do I know this? If it’s because you undertook primary research you can reference your research, in all other cases you need a citation of where the information was obtained from.
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