Answer to Question #243514 in Computer Networks for Lee

Question

The following are noted about the institution:

• The tertiary institution consists of the Head Office in Cape Town and one campus each in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

• Each campus consists of:

o Four lecturing halls;

o A library;

o Four computer/electronic device facilities; o IT Support office.

• All client computers run Windows 7 or latest operating system, Microsoft Office 2013 suite, Microsoft Project and Microsoft Visio 2013.

• The network is centrally managed at the Head Office and all campuses are linked to the Head Office.

• Each campus is Wi-Fi enabled providing wireless connection to staff and students.

Q.4.1 Design an implementable routing and bridging solution for the network. Your

solution must address the following design and operation aspect of all routers.

Q.4.1.1 Functionality of the network layer.

Q.4.1.2 Design and implementation of data plane.

Q.4.2 Draw a detail diagram showing the design and implementation of Q.4.1 above.

Answer 1

4.1.1) Functionality of the network layer:

 The network layer provides the means of transferring a variable - length network packets from a source to a destination host via one or more networks. Functions of the network layer include: connectionless communication. The primary function of the network is to permit different networks to be interconnected. It does this by forwarding packets to network routes which, rely on algorithms to determine the best paths for the data to travel: this paths are known as virtual circuits. The network layer can support either connection - oriented are connectionless networks, but such a network can only be of one type and not both.

4.1.2) In computing, the data plane is the poet of software, in routing, the forwarding plane, sometimes called the data plane, sometimes defined the part of the router architecture that decides what to do with packets arriving on an inbound interface.

4.1.3) In network routing, the control plane is the part of the router architecture that is connected with drawing the network topology, or the information in a routing table that defines what to do with incoming packets. Depending on the specific router implementation, there may be a separate forwarding information base that is populated by the control plane, but used by the forwarding plane to look up packets, at very high speed.

4.1.4) Routing allows multiple networks to communicate independently and yet remain separate, whereas bridging connects two separate networks as if they were a single network. A bridge is a device that connects and poses packets between two network segments that use the same communications protocol. Bridges operate at the data link layer (layer2) of the OSI reference model. A bridge will filter, forward or flood an incoming frame based on the MAC address of the frame.