Submission Guidelines

Assignment 2 is worth 25% of the Unit Marks.

Deadline: Week-8 – Friday, 13th September 2024, 11:55 PM (Melbourne time)

● Submission format and details: You must submit exactly two files with the following formats:

● Presentation slides file: Firstname_LastName_StudentID.PPT (or .PPTX)

● Video Presentation file: FirstName_LastName.FileType

(Video files used on the web .avi .f4v .flv .fmp4 .m4v .mov .mp4 .mpe .mpeg .mpg .ogv .qt .ts .webm)

● Note that during your assignment submission, you may see a warning for your video file stating something of the form “This file will not be submitted to Turnitin…”. This is completely fine, and you can simply ignore this message. The video file will NOT be submitted to Turnitin; only the slides file is submitted.

● If you do not submit a video presentation, the assignment will be marked as zero.

● If you do not submit your presentation slides, a 50-mark penalty will be applied.

● You must adhere to the Monash University’s academic integrity rules. For example, if you use a resource, please clearly reference them. To avoid academic integrity issues please avoid copy and paste from any resources. In particular, do NOT copy and paste from:

1) assignment instructions and/or

2) from supporting and reference documentations.

These will be picked up by Turnitin and would increase your similarity score. There is no universal similarity score threshold that would trigger an investigation. If you adhere to the academic integrity rules, there would typically be minimal similarity. You will have a chance to see the Turnitin report when you upload a submission (even in draft mode). We recommend you to check the Turnitin report before finalising your submission.

●     Please note that the requirements for this Assignment are different from those that maybe given as supporting documents in Moodle. Your knowledge and understanding should be for the assessment tasks requirements here. Any supporting documentation you refer to would only be a guidance and cannot be copied verbatim from those resources.

●     The uploaded video file must be a clear student video recording of the presentation. The file can be any video format that can be opened on a standard Windows computer without specialised software (such as mp4). The length of the recording should be a maximum of 15:00 minutes only. Any video contents exceeding 15:00 minutes will be ignored and not marked.

●     A PPT version of your presentation slides should also be submitted to Moodle. Please note that the written contents in the slides must be included as texts, and not screenshots of writings. Written contents included as images (instead of texts) will not be accepted and will be discarded. You will be marked based on both your presentation video and slides  (including the recorded pages and your Appendix).

●     Please  note  that  you  must  follow  the  same  instructions  as  in  Assignment  1  regarding presenting a copy of your student ID in the beginning of the video and showing your face for the whole duration in the Video Presentation. If your face does not clearly appear in the video presentation, the assignment will be deemed invalid and marked as zero.

● The marks breakdown for Assignment-2 will be as follows:

● 55% for  the  quality  of  Network  Design  components  based  on  the  Assignment specifications, relevancy, related articles, technical design details and specifications used,  and  other  design  requirements  and  clarity  in  the  design  of  all  the  other relevant network components,

● 15% for Section 2.3, and

● 30% for  presentation  and  editorial  quality  including  literature  review  with relevance   to   the   topic   selected,   quality   of   PPT   slides,   visual   presentation, explanations, level of understanding of their work demonstrated, and clarity of video and audio.

● Important Submission check for every student: It is the students’ responsibility to check if their submitted work is markable by our teaching team. It is strongly recommended that, after making a draft submission (before finalising it), every student immediately download their own draft files (e.g., recorded video/PDF/imnfile, etc) and check if the draft files would be  downloadable/readable/markable by a tutor. If the teaching team member is unable to mark your submission, 50% reduction of total marks maybe applied.

● When you upload the assignment files on Moodle and perform the above check, please make sure the submission is NOT left in the draft mode. Before the expiry of the deadline make sure, the submission is made final. If the submission is left in draft mode, it will be deemed as NOT submitted and will not be marked.

●     You can create multiple video parts at different times and combine and submit a single video at the end. Make sure that the final video is clear and understandable.

●     If your device does not have a camera, you can borrow a device from Monash Connect or Library. It's your responsibility to plan ahead for this. Monash Connector Library not having available devices for loan at a particular point in time is not a valid excuse.

●     The teaching team members may not be able to understand a language beyond English. All demonstrations must be in English. If your device does not support English, you may loan a device from Monash Connector Library.

Penalties:

•    Late submissions will result in a 5% deduction of the total marks per calendar day (up  to 7 calendar days). For example, if you get 80/100 marks originally and submit 2 days late,then you would get a 10-mark deduction (5 marks per day) and your final marks    would be 70/100.

•    Submissions more than 7 calendar days after the due date will receive a mark of zero

(0) and no assessment feedback will be provided.

•    If the video recording exceeds the 15.00-minute limit, the parts beyond 15:00 minutes will NOT be marked and will be ignored.

•    Speeding up the video recording (e.g., using software) is NOT allowed and such submissions will receive a ZERO mark.

Learning Outcomes covered:

•    Analyse and formulate the functions and architectures of (wireless) local area networks, building backbone networks and the Internet.

•    Examine networks using the underlying fundamental theories, models and protocols for data transmission.

•    The Assignment-2 mainly covers materials from Weeks 4-6.

Late submissions and special considerations:

•    All extension and special consideration requests are managed centrally. The teaching team cannot directly decide if you can/cannot have an extension or special

consideration. Your request should be submitted directly to:

https://www.monash.edu/students/admin/assessments/extensions-special- consideration

Please make sure to select the correct assignment from the menu provided in the system, and not enter an assignment name manually.

•    Without an approved special consideration request, late submission penalties will apply as described above.

Marks: The assignment will be marked out of 100. This assignment is worth 25% of your unit total marks.

Feedback: Your Tutor will provide you with marks and feedback on Moodle.

Presentation: The presentation should look professional, which means you need to pay attention to spelling, punctuation, grammar, and visualisation. It is important that your presentation has a clear structure.  Prepare  presentation  slides  of  at  least  10  pages/slides*  long  and  a  maximum  of 15 pages/slides. The presentation should ideally not contain too much text and should use a minimum font size of 12pt (preferably larger). You may include tables, figures, pictures, graphical designs etc. The page/slide limit does not include title page, references, and Appendix. Any page/slide beyond the page/slide limit of 15 will not be marked.Use FIT standard presentation format.

Note: You can find great tips on how to prepare a presentation on Monash’s web pages. Here are some links to get started:

Language and Learning and Online website:

● https://www.monash.edu/rloand

● https://www.monash.edu/rlo/assignment-samples/engineering/oral-presentation.

● Software tools for drawing sitemaps, any drawing tool should work, for example LucidChart, or even presentation tools such as PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. Scans of hand-drawn maps are acceptable if they are neat and easily readable.

●   In order to record yourself, werecommend you use Zoom.

Monash University – Zoom (https://monash.zoom.us). However, you are free to use any other software as long as the final file submitted to Moodle is understandable and accessible by our teaching team.

Reporting: An Enterprise Network Design Report

A Request For Proposal (RFP) to Design Wired LANs,

Wireless LANs and support Backbone Network

1.  Assignment Description

Objective

A public transport company requires its office buildings to be connected over a wired LAN and Wireless LAN (WLAN). You have been asked to respond to the following excerpt from their RFP (Request For Proposals) in the newspaper.

Scope of The Work

At present, the total number of office employees in Melbourne is 230. Each office worker is provided with an office space or cubicle with a multimedia desktop PC having a wired network connection.  Owing  to  a  business  acquisition,  the  number  of  employees  in  Melbourne  is expected to increase substantially. The size of the Melbourne office, both Wired and Wireless LAN will increase (from current 230 employees) to 500 employees; after two new 3-storey buildings called East side building & Westside building (located across the road) have been acquired to accommodate the additional office space needed to provide equitable seating arrangements for the increased number of employees in the new buildings (see Figure 1).

Figure 1:A Typical floor plan for structured cabling for LAN and WLAN

For the two new buildings you can assume the three floors as Ground floor, First floor & Second

Floor. The new buildings require structured network wiring for network connections, where each floor has a wiring closet with necessary structured cabling. Each wiring closet requires four fiber optic cables running to a dedicated server room on the ground floor. The new buildings also need a backbone network to be connected to the existing Main office network (across the road). Please note that the ground floor of the buildings (west and east) are not the same, they have different ground floor, i.e. Each new building has its own ground floor.

It is envisaged that the new buildings in Melbourne office would support, both, wired and wireless networked office environment where each of the staff PC and their personal laptops would be equipped with office desktop high resolution video conferencing software  (VoIP), along with the usual business applications such as web, email, and regular office productivity packages. The average network traffic generated by each active wired network user is estimated to be around 25-30 Mbps, while the WLAN traffic generated for each floor would be 20% of the wired traffic.

The expected active user’s activity pattern for the new buildings maybe seen in Figure 2, where the new buildings will accommodate the new staff members equally distributed to each floor of the  new  buildings.  The  Wired  LAN  infrastructure  needs  to  be  designed  to  support  the anticipated peak time data traffic, and in addition, support the Wireless LAN. The design should show the WLAN Access Points (AP) connectivity to the wired infrastructure. At the existing main office network  (across the backbone  network), a capacity increase will be required for key devices   and   their    support    infrastructure   (e.g.,   Servers,    Routers   and/or    switches)   to accommodate the increased traffic volume from the new buildings. Employees are expected to access the main office network and its resources frequently. So, from the business perspective, it  is  important  that  the  backbone  network  connectivity  is  maintained  all  the  time.  Loss  of productivity is not an option from the network connectivity point of view.

Figure 2: The number of expected active users during the business hours.

Figure 2 also shows the expected number of active users for the two new buildings during the

business hours. This number of expected active users is useful for minimum network connections  requirements and to estimate the minimum throughput network design requirements.

2.  Assignment Requirements

Submissions for this assignment should be a recorded video presentation and its complete set of slides  with   explanatory  figures  and  other  requirements  for  a  professional  presentation.  The assignment specifications are in the form of a request for proposal (RFP) to potential suppliers. An RFP is a solicitation often made through a bidding process by any company interested in the design and procurement of installation contract services. This assignment provides an opportunity for you to work individually and  apply  Data  Communications  and  Computer  Networking  concepts  to  a practical   network   design.   You   are   required to  design  the network;  make  networking recommendations  based on the  RFP  requirements  and  present  your  solutions  in  a  formal presentation.

2.1 The video presentation should contain the following important diagrams to support your

proposal:

(a)  A  conceptual  high-level  diagram  showing  a  typical  floor  plan,  backbone  network (connecting the floors) and a backbone network to connect to the main office.

(b) Atypical floor plan (one floor of both the East & West building would be sufficient).

(c) Students need to specify the types of Switches, Routers, Access Points, Cables, and show the Servers, Routers, Switches and Access Point (AP) locations in the design. No addressing and/or routing is required.

(d) Traffic throughput calculations for each floor, each building and backbone network.

(e) Backbone connection diagrams (using schematic diagrams of cross-section of a building showing switches, routers etc.).

(f)  Backbone network connectivity for the new buildings connecting with the head  office building.

2.2 Students should include details of the following information in response to the request for Proposal  (RFP)  in  the  presentation  slides  and  any  additional  technical  information  can  be included in the Appendix. We ask you to submit your final presentation slides along with your appendix.

(a) Project Requirements: Project requirements can be derived from the Objectives and

Scope of Work section of the RFP. A requirement brief is usually an itemised list of the client’s requirements derived from the RFP.

Important: Please make sure to NOT exactly copy-paste information from the assignment

specifications. You should use your own sentences.

(b) Wired, Wireless LAN and backbone network Design: Wired, Wireless LAN design (for a typical floor) and backbone network design, must include the following information:

(i) Computer desktop layout plan with network topology for atypical floor level.

(ii) Switch and Wireless Access Point locations on a typical floor, vertical cable paths and  lengths  between  the  floors.  Switch  and  Access  Point  functional  specifications. Assume the floor to ceiling height as 3 metres approximately including the false ceiling.

(iii) Router (and/or Switches) locations (both the existing and the new ones) and their interconnections providing backbone network connectivity.

(c) Design Rules (or Assumptions): You need to outline design rules for LANs, WLANs, and Backbone Network. Your description should include:

(i) Detailed steps required in the network design process,

(ii) Methods used to form estimates of network performance for each type of devices,

(iii) An example of a basic sample design showing proposed floor plan, assumptions, justifications, and calculations.

(iv) Assumptions of backbone connectivity using wired/wireless media needs to be reported.

(d)  Recommendations  and  Justification:  A  summary  of  your   recommendations   with   a statement of justification.

[e] Remark for backbone connectivity building to building: Backbone network, please refer to Assignment-2-Support Doc slides 22-25 (available on Moodle).

2.3 Ethical Network Usage policy and unethical behaviour:

In your  presentation,  address  some  examples  of  unethical  activities  that  users  could  potentially engage in. Additionally, how would you propose to address these issues through the development of an Ethical Network Usage policy with a list of guidelines regarding appropriate network conduct, prohibited activities, and behaviours deemed unethical? Discuss three identified unethical activities and three policy directives as part of your presentation. Note that your answer must relate to your particular network design rather than being completely generic, applicable to any network.

Proposed structure of presentation slides:

●   Title page

●   A Brief Summary of Problem Definition

●   Important Information and Diagram(s) listed in Sections 2.1 and 2.3.

●   Conclusions and Recommendations

●   References (You would usually stop here in your recorded video)

●   Appendix (This may contain additional information listed in Section 2.2)

Sources and referencing

Any claims or recommendations that you make should be substantiated with supporting references.