Archive for the 'School' Category

Network Diagrams

Published
by
Chris Meller
on October 6, 2006
in Internet, Public Opinion, Questions, School and Techno-Babble
. 2 Comments

My final class for my Networking degree is a “real world application” class. You get a basic RFP that outlines specs for a ficticious company’s new network, and your team has to write up a professional quote for it, pretending to be a consulting company bidding on the project.

For our project, we’re bidding on the network of a company called “Outdoor Equipment Supplies (OES)”. Our team decided on the name “Port 22 Consulting”, and we’ve got a max budget of $150,000 to spend on all the hardware, software, and networking equipment for this company.

Being a fan of networking, I decided to do the Network portion1. Essentially, it comes down to a main headquarters and a few branch offices consisting of about 35 people. The main office will have users and all the servers, which everyone has to be able to access.

Pretty basic corporate network, right? Well, tell me what you think:

Network Diagram - Corporate Office

Obviously the DMZ segment isn’t complete yet, mainly since we’re still fluctuating on the number of servers we’ll need. I also haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to recommend as the internet connection for each office. I was thinking a T1 may be beefy enough for the main office, and whatever DSL or cable connection they can get cheaply for each branch office2. Any input on that either?

Assuming I have time (and the motiviation later-on), I also plan on doing per-switch port lists, indicating which rooms a given port maps to. It seems so sad to do more network diagraming for a ficticious class project than I’ve actually done for our corporate network at work, but such is life…

  1. And since I was voluntold to be the Team Captain (CEO of our consulting company), I get what I want. [back]
  2. All the branch offices are for Sales Reps, and have fewer than 5 people in them. [back]

A Tasks Milestone

Published
by
Chris Meller
on August 17, 2006
in Announcements, Commentary, Daily Grind, Internet, Links and School
. 0 Comments

It’s taken me quite some time, thanks to my somewhat conservative tasking style, but I finally hit 1,000 Tasks just now, as I finished adding tasks for this semester’s classes (Public Speaking, in particular…).

I’m really not sure if this is a good milestone or not (am I incredibly organized, or just incredibly busy?), but it’s something to note, none-the-less…

Thanks to Alex King for creating such an amazing application for us to use. By the way, Alex, I’m sorry to hear that you felt the need to leave your baby. For what it’s worth, I think you did an amazing job with it!

McAfee Wireless Home Network Security - Coming Up!

Published
by
Chris Meller
on May 4, 2006
in Commentary, Follow Up, Internet, Reviews, School and Techno-Babble
. 2 Comments

Back in January, I mentioned McAfee Wireless Home Network Security, and how it got me thinking about securing a home network more easily with a one-stop solution.

It took me longer than I’d have liked, but I finally got around to checking it out near the end of April and worked it in as my research paper for my Wireless Networking and Appliances class. The experience was both a surprise and a let-down at the same time, so it proved to be a worthwhile experiment in the end.

I want to do this up right (with screenshots and what not), so it’s going to take a while yet for me to get the post together, but I wanted to let everyone know it was coming. Stay tuned for more details!

To Arms, My Monkey-Loving Friends!

Published
by
Chris Meller
on May 1, 2006
in Announcements, Commentary, Daily Grind, Internet, Links, Random, Rants, School and Work
. 1 Comment

Imagine my unbridled glee when I got to work this morning after class, revved up NetNewsWire, and saw this:

Security Monkey Posts

Any Monday that starts off with a new Security Monkey blog entry can’t be all bad. His chimpy goodness hath been bestowed on me, and that was like an omen, telling me that the rest of the day was going to be alright.

Boy, those skies clouded up really quick:

ITToolbox Blogs are Dead

Oh, the humanity… How can they do this to me? Some IIS-loving BOFH at ITToolbox needs to be FIRED for farking up their blogs. This transgression shall not stand, I tell you!

To arms, my monkey-loving friends, to armmmssss! We shall storm the castle and force them to give us their monkey secrets! They can’t stop us, I tell you! Victory and bannannas shall be ours!

I’m Still Alive!

Published
by
Chris Meller
on March 13, 2006
in Announcements, Daily Grind, School and Work
. 0 Comments

Contrary to somewhat popular opinion, I’m not actually dead… No, I’m afraid you’ll have to find another assasin, because this one couldn’t come through on the contract.

If you’re wondering where I’ve been (since it’s been almost 2 full weeks since my last post, which wasn’t much of a post), I offer you this screenshot:

iCal Screenshot - April 06

As the note says, that’s my iCal window for April ‘06. Add 40 hours of work in there for each week, and you’ve got my life. Yes, I’m a very busy (and increasingly unhappy) Meller these days. You’ll just have to excuse me if I don’t manage to find the time for posting here (it’s not like I’ve found the time to do anything else but eat and sleep either).

So until next time, I hope I have at least a few readers hanging in there. I promise as soon as this semester ends we’ll have some more good times together… Oh, and Spring Break is coming up in about a month.