You will continue their development of the network design and architecture proposal. New content will include an analysis of the network traffic requirements that are necessary to support the organiza

You will continue their development of the network design and architecture proposal. New content will include an analysis of the network traffic requirements that are necessary to support the organiza
12 Operating System and Network Upgrade Student Name Course Name and Number Computer Networking Project Name Network Communication Protocols Date 11/08/2021 Table of Contents I.Distributed Network Requirements Analysis 3 a.Introduction 3 b.Summary 3 II.Communication Protocols Analysis and Recommendations 5 a.Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol 6 b.Diameter Protocol 7 c.Hypertext Transfer Protocol 7 d.Recommendation and Applicability at AT&T 8 III.Network Traffic Analysis and Recommendations 9 IV.Network Design and Architecture 10 V.Future Needs Analysis and Recommendations 11 VI.References 12 Distributed Network Requirements Analysis Introduction Competition is one of the challenges that organizations continue to face as they run their day-to-day operations. To remain competitive in the market, an effective distribution network should be in place. This will help the organizations to effectively communicate messages through the various computers that act as nodes to reach the intended targets unaltered and at the right time. Distributed networks also allow the computers to work more efficiently by allowing dependency on one another. The objective of this paper will address the concepts of a distributed network by performing a requirements analysis to establish the need for a distributed network at AT & T. Summary The company selected for the project will be AT&T. two years ago, AT&T was the world’s largest telecommunications company in the world (Kumar, 2019). It is the largest company that provides mobile telephone services in the United States. AT&T is also known as being the best provider of fixed telephone services in the United States. recently, AT&T completed an acquisition of Verizon Wireless. As a result of the strategic move, AT&T acquired both Verizon Wireless, Alltel, and Unicell in the United States. To ensure that AT&T remains at the top of the business, it is important to upgrade the operating systems and the networks being used at AT&T to ensure effectiveness and better productivity. The company is large as it had 229,055 employees worldwide in 2020 with its headquarters in Dallas, Texas, in the United States (AT&T, 2021). The current CEO of the firm is John T. Stankey. The firm has embraced inclusivity and diversity. The benefits that AT&T would accrue from distributed networking will include increased efficiency, scalability, and increased reliability of the services provided by the telecommunications giant in the United States. Through distributed networking, the areas of functionality that AT&T could have improved include improving scalability, improving reliability, improving the efficiency of services rendered, automatic backup and recovery, as well as automated disaster recovery. Scalability – Increase the number of physical hosts to unlimited seamlessly Reliability – increase uptime and availability to 99.99 percent Efficiency – implement multi-processor cores to replace the single-processor cores used Automatic backup and recovery – backing up data regularly. Automatic disaster recovery – Retrieving backed-up data to ensure normal operations after security incidences. The connectivity requirements for the proposed network include opening UDP ports 1025 – 65535and adequate bandwidth. On the other hand, the security requirements for the proposed network include installing firewall and proxy rules to allow SSL traffic over port 443, installing regular system updates, using Linux operating system, and installing antivirus software. All the new infrastructure that will be added will be implemented in form of a virtualized environment using VMware & ESXi Hypervisors. The container environment will be implemented for more than 50 percent of the new virtualized environment. The other requirements that may affect the design and architecture of the network will include budget limitations, limitations imposed by using the existing network infrastructure, the existing operating systems, and lack of training needs to meet the standards required. Communication Protocols Analysis and Recommendations The communications that will be supported at AT&T with the proposed network will include tasks that require accuracy. There is a wide range of communication protocols that could be used at AT&T. the majority of the tasks that will be conducted at AT&T and its network will require the data being worked on to be accurate at all times. Mobile users will have to be identified correctly and authenticated before being allowed to access services from the network. Furthermore, the network parameter settings controlling how base stations behave and interact with the mobile users will have to be configured in the right manner to prevent miscommunications that would cause disastrous effects to the company. More users are shifting to the use of mobile devices to access the internet, Voice over IP, social media platforms, and video conferencing. Effective communication protocols will help AT&T communicate effectively in a more cost-effective and scalable manner as the firm expands and increases its network coverage. It will also allow AT&T to shift communications easily from Ethernet to wireless and back to Ethernet connections with ease. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) offers a more reliable and connection-oriented mode for communication. According to Boyko, Varkentin, and Polyakova (2019), the TCP/IP protocol is a preferred option when an organization desires to transport important information like Call Detail Records (CDR). The billable information had to be sent securely to the billing department, roaming partners at both the local and international spheres, and the care team. Using the TCP/IP model, a header is attached to the data that is about to be transmitted with the right parameters such as the acknowledgment number, the sequence number, as well as a checksum. These parameters will help to accurately assemble the data at the receiving end while the data that may have been lost or corrupted during the transmission, upon confirmation using the checksum, will be retransmitted. This ensures both the reliability and accuracy of the data transmitted and received by the other entity. As a result, the TCP/IP model is thus the most effective communication protocol to be used at AT&T. Diameter Protocol Diameter is considered to be another important Authentication Authorization Accounting (AAA) protocol widely adopted and used across all Internet-Protocol (IP) networks and in the telecommunications network industry (Joshi & Mohapatra, 2019). It is considered to be an improvement of the RADIUS protocol. Diameter has helped to address some of the common limitations that existed with the implementation of the RADIUS protocol. For instance, Diameter has helped to overcome challenges in secured communications, scalability, fault-tolerance, node capabilities, reliability in transmission, clarity of the defined procedures, and load balancing. Based on the requirement analysis, Diameter could also be an effective communication protocol that could support the proposed network at AT&T. However, Diameter has architectural flaws that cannot be offset through blocking traffic or filtering (Joshi & Mohapatra, 2019). Hypertext Transfer Protocol The third communication protocol that could be implemented to support the proposed network based on the results of the requirements analysis at AT&T is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The HTTP is an application layer protocol that can be used to communicate data on the Web. The HTTP protocol can help the business effectively market itself on the web by increasing the visibility of the firm on the internet. It acts as a request-response protocol that allows the users to effectively interact with the web resources over a TCP protocol. Methods such as GET, POST, HEAD, and DELETE are used on the HTTP to perform various tasks. For example, GET can be used to access specific resources, POST is used to add content, HEAD is used to request specific resources without the body content, while DELETE helps to get rid of certain resources (Extrahop, 2021). However, HTTP does not offer a reliable exchange. Recommendation and Applicability at AT&T The recommended communications protocol will be TCP/IP protocol. Boyko, Varkentin, and Polyakova (2019) affirm that the TCP/IP model is an open protocol suite which makes it available for use by both individuals and companies. It is also highly scalable and thus could be expanded and condensed based on the growth of AT&T. The TCP/IP model is also highly interoperable which makes it available for cross-platform communications among heterogeneous networks. Furthermore, the TCP/IP model is highly reliable because packets that are corrupted, lost, or compromised in any way can be retransmitted. This could be verified using the accompanying checksum. The TCP/IP model is thus more appropriate for use at AT&T based on the business analysis requirements established. Network Traffic Analysis and Recommendations Network Design and Architecture Future Needs Analysis and Recommendations References AT&T (2021). AT&T’s Workforce Diversity. Retrieved from https://about.att.com/pages/diversity Boyko, A., Varkentin, V., & Polyakova, T. (2019). Advantages and Disadvantages of the Data Collection Method Using SNMP. In 2019 International Multi-Conference on Industrial Engineering and Modern Technologies (FarEastCon) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. Extrahop. (2021). Network protocol library. Retrieved from https://www.extrahop.com/resources/protocols/ Joshi, A., & Mohapatra, A. K. (2019). Security analysis of wireless authentication protocols. International Journal of Sensors Wireless Communications and Control, 9(2), 247-252. Kumar, B. R. (2019). AT&T–Time Warner Acquisition. In Wealth Creation in the World’s Largest Mergers and Acquisitions (pp. 121-129). Springer, Cham.