Running Head: STRATFORD NETWORK DESIGN Stratford Network Design Student’s Name: Jawad H Naqvi Date: 26/03/2018 1 STRATFORD NETWORK DESIGN 2 The selected project is the construction of a new network for Stratford Hospital center. The project was selected because the health of the patients at the hospital is related to the network. Poor network performance hinders the provision of exceptional medical care at the Stratford Hospital. As such, it is essential to make the necessary upgrades and improvements. The main constraint in the process of implementing a new network is the budget. The first requirement is a thorough assessment of the network to identify the existing problems and determine the most effective solution to optimize the network. This will include identification of best configuration settings, areas of high usage, access points, causes of lag time and other factors that affect the performance of the network. Implementing the new network will require an upgrade of equipment at the hospitals (Gulla & Mori, 2013). A considerable amount of time will have to be spent troubleshooting equipment and other devices for potential failures for appropriate failures to be made. Old equipment will also have to be replaced. The current network design at Stratford hospital may be poor which has a negative impact on both the patients and hospital staff. Therefore, the new network should have a strong design to prevent compromised communication, delayed response times, decreased patient numbers and weakened security, to ensure optimal network performance, the hospital will need to hire new information technology technicians (Oppenheimer, 2012). This may be an additional constraint to the implementation of the new network because of the additional workforce required. The hospital may experience problems managing network security. To implement the new network at Stratford hospital, it necessary to first conduct an indepth survey of the hospital to determine the best network design. This should take into consideration the floor plan of the hospital. The next step is to include and configure various wireless ac- STRATFORD NETWORK DESIGN 3 cess points in specific areas of the hospital to ensure maximum coverage at the hospital. The access points should be evenly distributed and located in areas that do not affect the functionality of the hospital. Network security should be taken very seriously, and the encryption standards should comply with HIPAA standards. The new network should be able to identify any rogue access points and effectively mitigate them. It should also have firewall capabilities and network analytics to ensure security. The network traffic is also expected to be segregated to prevent unauthorized access to patient information and hospital records. The Wi-Fi network at Stratford hospital should enable both guest and patient access with an efficient and secure transfer of information from one point to another. In the new network, traffic controls are essential especially considering the nature of sensitive information transported to various departments at the hospital. Despite the reliance on Wi-Fi networks, the hospital needs to have a high bandwidth wired network to minimize redundancy in the hospital system. After installation of the network, the various devices used in the network like printers and computers should be tested to make sure they are operating as expected. The new network design should consider the hospital setting at Stratford hospital (Pop, 2013). The system is expected to be easy to manage to reduce the number of information technology staff required to manage it. The new network also considers back up and data recovery at the hospital. The main constraint is the budget needed to implement a new system. References STRATFORD NETWORK DESIGN Gulla, V., & Mori, A. R. (2013). Telehealth networks for hospital services: New methodologies. Hershey, PA: Medical Information Science Reference. Oppenheimer, P. (2012). Top-down network design. Indianapolis, Ind: Cisco Press. Pop, P. C. (2013). Generalized network design problems: Modeling and optimization. (Generalized network design problems.) Berlin: De Gruyter. 4
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