Barrett & Barrett Advertising NJ is the newly established satellite office of
Barrett & Barrett Advertising CA. Due to their increasing number of East Coast
clientele, they have opened a satellite office to accommodate that business. B &
B Advertising currently employs 56 people, 5 of which will transfer to the NJ
office upon final renovations. Although a small outfit by number, gross sales
for fiscal year 1998 exceeded $18,000,000.00. B & B CA’s current computer usage
is significantly high. Their need for efficient graphic capability requires them
to maintain state of the art software and hardware. However B & B has stressed
that user friendliness is a higher priority. B & B NJ poses the need for a
small-scale local area network, to be tied into its parent company in
California. The California office already has a LAN in place and operational.
Their principal need for the LAN in NJ will be to transfer ad proposals to the
California office and back via electronic mail. As requested by B & B, new
equipment will be purchased for the NJ satellite office. In the probable event
that B & B’s clientele increases, all equipment will be relocated and reused,
with minimal loss (i.e. cabling costs).
Located on the third floor of 1113 Industry Way, its architecture presented
ease for a networking situation. The office space is one floor with the
dimensions of the 28 feet in width and 50 feet in length. The suite is divided
into four offices (12 feet 6 inches by 15 feet 6 inches), a conference room (15
feet by 10 feet 6 inches), a LAN room (12 feet 6 inches), and a common area. All
of these sub-divisions contain drop ceilings 12 feet high, which will create
ease of laying network cables, as phone lines have already been laid during
renovations. The floor plan attached will ease in understanding dimensions and
phone/drop placement. The first step of implementing the network involves
running 2 drops to each of the offices and LAN room and 1 to the conference
room. The hub will be located in a small room dedicated to LAN equipment. This
room was designed in that location for centrality as well as keeping the
aesthetics of the suite, which was of particular concern for B & B. The entire
suite will be cabled with category 5 twisted pair wire. Wall faceplates to
include both drops and a phone jack will be installed in each room. As can be
expected, the physical cost to install these 11 drops is minimal, the labor is
the majority of this expense: Office # # of Drops $ Horizontal Run $ Vertical
Run $ Total 1 2 29.77 24.64 22.41 2 2 38.23 24.64 62.87 3 2 30.67 24.64 55.31 4
2 38.59 24.64 63.23 LAN Rm. 2 27.43 0.00 27.43 Conf. Rm. 1 30.85 24.64 55.49
*Labor 11 24 hr $79/hr 1896.00 Total cost of running drops 2182.74 Fast Ethernet
was the protocol of choice. The California office currently uses standard
Ethernet, but is upgrading to Fast Ethernet and requested we do the same to make
employee transition as simple as possible. Fast Ethernet runs at speeds of 100
Mbps. The wiring is a higher quality than the Category 3 normally used by
Ethernet, therefore is a bit more expensive, but a worthy advantage. Fast
Ethernet defines a star topology. There are many advantages in designing a LAN
based on a star topology. It allows expansion to the existing LAN without effort
or disruption. Troubleshooting, repair, and maintenance can be accomplished to a
failed node without holding up or disrupting work on other nodes. Hardware plays
an important role in reliability of a network. Each workstation is to be custom
ordered from Dell.
