BUS 3500
Management Information Systems

Exercise/Case 2: Contoso Inc. Local Area Network
(40 points)

Due date: 10/30/2007

Contoso Inc. has 10 desktop PCs. All of the PCs are used by the company's employees to perform regular office work (word processing, spreadsheet, database, etc.). Five out of the 10 PCs have a 100 Mbps Ethernet NIC. The company is thinking about implementing a LAN to provide e-mail service, database service, and file sharing. A consultant hired by the company recommended to install a 100BaseTX local area network*.

1) List and explain all the advantages of implementing the 100BaseTX LAN versus using the 10 PCs as stand-alone computers.

2) What network topology do you suggest for the company and why?

3) The company management have heard about Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network architectures. They need to know how different P2P netwoks are, compared to the Client-Server network architecture. They need your help to compare the two and advise them in choosing between P2P and Client-Server.

4) The company also needs your expertise in determining what additional hadware components they need to buy in order to implement the 100BaseTX LAN. They specifically want you to shop online at http://www.cdw.com in order to buy those additional hardware components. They need you to come up with a table like the one shown below. For the length of the cable to buy, assume that the average distance between devices in the network is about 5 feet.

Component CDW # Qty Price Total
56Kbps V.90 Type II PC Card Modem
 469972 2 $80.47 $160.94
         
         
Note:
1. The 56Kbps V.90 Type II PC Card Modem listed in the table is not needed. It's just an example to show how the items should appear in the table.
2. At www.cdw.com, Adapters (i.e. NICs) and hubs/switches are found in the Networking category. Physical transmission media are found under Cables in the Hardware category.


FORMAT OF PAPER:

Your Assignment must be typed, edited and presented in the following order:

(1) Title Page (with your name, your class and section, name of case and due date)

(2) Your answers to questions 1 to 4

(3) (For question 4) Printout of the web page showing the description of each of the components selected from CDW website.

NOTE: STAPLE THE COMPLETED ASSIGNMENT, NO FOLDERS, BINDERS

* 100BaseTX is an Ethernet standard. It requires Category 5 or higher twisted pair. It is implemented using a physical star topology with an Ethernet hub or switch as a central point. In addition, Ethernet NICs that can send and receive at 100 Mbps are required for the standard to work effectively.