Designing a Wireless Local Area Network

Budget

It was determined that $15,000 would be budgeted for the 2003-2004 school year to upgrade the Richland High School Counseling office. Due to the age of the school and the construction of the walls (block concrete), wireless technology was investigated and determined to be an appropriate solution to adding laptops, tablets and handheld wireless technology for students, parents and counselors to access course scheduling, college preparation and transcript request.

Purchasing Justification

The Counselor's office is equipped with Dell desktop GX 260 computers. It was determined that students needed to access class schedules and request transcripts from counseling office computers and download course catalog information into handheld computers. It was felt for flexibility, security, and access, wireless laptop computers connecting wirelessly to the district network would provide the best source of technology. The age of the building and type of structure (concrete block walls) hindered traditional cableing and four wireless hubs would provide coverage for the receptionist area, conference and training rooms.

Topology and Architecture Justification

The Counseling office at Richland High School have Dell GX240 desktop computers in all counseling offices. The six counselors received Dell Axim 3's with wireless connectivity to the Linksys wireless hubs throughout the Counseling office area. There are six Dell C640 wireless latitude laptops and four scribe tablets that will be signed for by a student or parent to be used within the counseling complex. All computers in the office will run on a client-server network connected to the district main server. Windows 2000 operating system will provide validation of users and access security.

Schematic

The Counseling office is 50 ft. wide and 75' long. It consists of a receptionists area, a conference room, a college preparation room, attendance offices, and 5 counselors office as well as copy room. The rooms were originally built from concrete blocks and remodeling for network drops has proven extremely expensive in the past. The receptionist office and the 5 counselors offices were modernized with 2 drops each 5 years ago. After researching wireless technology, it was felt 4 wireless hubs would provide adequate network access for laptops, tablets and handheld computers.

Susan Quinn

Copyright © 2003