Kudler Fine Foods Network
Victoria Thompson
NTC/ 365
August 11, 2015
Craig Urizzola

Data transmission and communication are essential in any networked environment. In order for two devices to communicate with one another they must speak the same language and follow the same rules. This language or set of rules is known as protocol. Protocols and standardization among devices allows for seamless, efficient, and productive communication as well as data transmission and file sharing. The future growth potential for Kudler Fine Foods has initiated a need for converting the current wired Ethernet LAN locations to wireless LANs. In order to do this new hardware, such as WLAN controllers and wireless access points, will be required. In addition to the protocols that the networks already use to communicate- several new protocols will be introduced. The lightweight access point protocol (LWAPP) is one example of a protocol that will be used in addition to the protocols associated with the 802.11n media controls used by the wide area network (WAN) and the IEEE 802.3u standards used by the 100 Base T Ethernet wired cable now in use (“What is Ethernet? Webopedia”, 2015). Converting to the wireless LAN environment will require a few changes in the overall architecture of the network; however, most of the hardware devices that are currently being used will not have to be replaced. As of now, the dedicated lines that connect the three locations are sufficient for the WAN; and, the POS terminals and user terminals are up-to-date. These devices will only require software installization and will also need to be properly configured to be a part of the WLAN environment. The addition of the wireless access points will allow greater flexibility and ease where future growth of the company is concerned. Adding more terminals or any other device to the wireless network will be easy and cheap. In order to document traffic patterns for anomaly identification traffic analysis can be used as a defense technique. Traffic load management, traffic types, and sampling methods are all important factors that help create the most efficient voice networks. This will prove to be most useful when dealing with the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) traffic. Latency, response time, and jitter should also be examined and studied. Latency refers to the amount of time required for a packet to go from the source sending it to the destination source that is to receive it. Kudler’s dedicated OC1 SONET connections provide very low latency because of the use of fiber optics for data transmission. Response time refers to the amount of time between the end of a request or demand and the beginning of the response at the source terminal. In a network setting, jitter is the amount of time between a packet’s departure from one system to its arrival at the destination system; and it affects real-time communication (Rouse, 2015). Data rates, also known as thoroughput, is directly proportional to the amount of available bandwidth. Understanding and maintaining these attributes within a network will increase robustness, efficiency, and productivity. The system management and network software installed on the Cisco routers as well as the servers in each of the locations will help ensure the availability of network access. Network availability will also be managed by the new hardware and software associated with the wireless devices that will be implemented for the conversion to the WLAN architecture.

References
Rouse, M. (2015). What is jitter?. Retrieved from http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/definition/jitter
What is ethernet? Webopedia. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/Ethernet.htm