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networking project!!

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19 years 7 months ago #5086 by rooney18
hi their! ive just started back in college doing 3rd year in IT SUPPORT we hav been told that we have to do a networking project on anything to do within the area networking which will take up 20 weeks to complete, its an important project as it effect the years overall results, iam looking for some suggestions on what would be a good learning project to complete. eg"servers? networking porformance??" any suggestion would be gratefully welcome thanks..
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19 years 7 months ago #5092 by nske
Replied by nske on topic Re: networking project!!
something interesting and practical would be a study that covers seting up optimally a network infrastructure, that would serve the current and shortly forseen needs of a "Network Operation Central" for a larger network, the size of which you decide. The noc infrastructure would be made up from low-cost unuseable otherwise material, such us old x86s, and based completelly on free software!

An example of the serving needs:

- Selective routing (possibly dynamic if you want to compose your overall network from too many sub-networks) among the sub-networks and an external wan interface, i.e. with iptables and zebra/guagga (in case of dynamic).

- Concerning the access the sub-networks will have to the wan:
|_ Let some of them go out freelly via routing, and enhance users' experience by traffic shapping, giving priority to http, telnet and ssh over anything else.
|_ Let some others go out only through a caching proxy, setup your proxy to allow access only to limited external resources.
|_ Don't let the rest out at all

- Hosting a DNS server for:
|_ Serving and caching queries from the inside, directing to the inside and wan as well
|_ Serving as authorative for the internal network's domain(s)
|_ Serving as authorative for a domain at the WAN
Possibly set up a secondary DNS server to synch with the primary.

- Hosting central file servers containing globally available content as well as private storage for each user. Manage the available space everywhere using quotas and automate counter procedures for closing the quota limit, such us informing the user or informing you. You may consider using NFS for mounting storage devices among your machines and SAMBA for the remote windows clients.

- Hosting several websites at a webserver, available through both the wan and the other interfaces. FTP access also available. Mysql server possibly as well.

- Hosting a mailserver with accounts for everyone, routable from the wan. Set up spam blocking. Consider the advantages and divantages of letting pop3/imap connections, allowing only through webmail, or both, at the wan and the lan respectivelly. Think of load-balancing between yout primary and a second mailserver, i.e. by serving in a "round-robin" fashion

- Use a dedicated computer as a firewall to control the flow in as many places as you see necessary. Set up an effective network-based IDS to modify accordingly firewall's rules on weird events.

- Collect every possible statistics to one computer, make some of them available through the web server at only the internal network.

- Think of technical ways for enhancing the security to the above infrastructure

- Think of an effective security policy for your users and technical ways to enforce it

- Decide which computer fits better for each purpose, depending on it's available resources (memory, cpu, storage, ..)

- Estimate via real-life statistics the serving capability for each of the machines (how many users consume how many resources, in detail)

- Develop a secure and practical way (perhaps through a web interface and php) for you and other administrators (with limited levels of access for each admin, i.e. the postmaster, the hostmaster, the web admin, e.t.c) to manage user accounts, configuration files and permissions globally.

What I would propably pick for such a large project (though I would regret it many times till finishing, guaranteed :D)
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19 years 7 months ago #5115 by rooney18
Replied by rooney18 on topic Re: networking project!!
thanks a million nske, thats been a great help their's more than enough info their!!!
thanks again...
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19 years 7 months ago #5178 by sahirh
Replied by sahirh on topic Re: networking project!!
Whoa, nice info nske !!

Sahir Hidayatullah.
Firewall.cx Staff - Associate Editor & Security Advisor
tftfotw.blogspot.com
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