COMP6170 Project networking
Project
Due: 26th October, 2025, 11:55pm (Sunday of Week 11)
Marks: 60, Value: 30%
Assessment Type: Individual
Please note: Any students found to have collaborated on their project will be flagged for misconduct and will therefore be subject to the university's discipline process.
Project Scenario
Kai Liu, your prospective client is a Electronics Manufacturer which currently operates in 7 locations. Your client has provided the following breakdown of the number of users at each site:
|
Location
|
Users
|
|
Site 1
|
21
|
|
Site 2
|
24
|
|
Site 3
|
8
|
|
Site 4
|
8
|
|
Site 5
|
13
|
|
Site 6
|
20
|
|
Site 7
|
11
|
Your client requires a competitive tender process, and so has sought proposals from multiple consultants. As part of this process, once all responders have submitted their initial proposals, the client will provide each proposer with the details of one competing design. Before submitting your final proposal, you are able to provide a comparison against a competing proposal. You are welcome to include aspects from the competing design in your final submission, but of course you must acknowledge where that design aspect came from.
Timeline & Deliverables
· Sunday 21st September, Week 8
o Submit Packet Tracer file implementing the given requirements to receive feedback.
o Submit a draft report (you only need to complete task 1 for your draft) as a Microsoft Word Document to receive feedback.
o Note: Submitting only one file will result in you not receiving feedback.
o The teaching staff will work on providing you feedback before week 10 so that you can complete your final report.
· Sunday 26th October 2025, 11:55pm, Week 11
o Submit your final Packet Tracer file, and
o Submit your full final report (you need to complete task 1 and 2) as a PDF for marking
Tasks
Your project requires you to complete 2 tasks for your client, and to document what you did in order to completing the tasks:
Task 1: Network Design with MPLS Connectivity (Draft Report)
This submission is not marked. Feedback will be provided to help you with the Final Project Report. If your submission is late, you will not receive feedback, which is likely to negatively impact your final mark for this assessment.
· Subnetting scheme
Devise and describe a subnetting scheme that accommodates the number of sites and users at each site.
o Your client’s service provider has allocated the 141.75.72.0/21 IP network range to your client.
o Your scheme should include:
§ network addresses,
§ broadcast addresses,
§ netmasks, and
§ host address ranges for each subnet.
o Present the resulting subnetting scheme as a table.
o Include a description of how your scheme was chosen:
§ Why did you choose the number and size of each subnet?
§ How does your design allow for the data centre, WAN links, and future growth?
· Packet Tracer implementation
Use the provided Packet Tracer template as a starting point.
o Create the 7 sites with the required number of PCs at each site according the the table above.
o Connect the PCs together in each site using appropriate intermediate devices.
o Where a site has more than 3 users, you should only create three PC's numbered 1, 2, and n, where n is the number of users.
§ Example: If site 4 has 7 users, create Site4-PC1, Site4-PC2, and Site4-PC7.
o Use Packet Tracer logical view, not physical view.
· Data centre design
Create an additional site for the data centre.
o Add one server and appropriate intermediary devices.
o Configure the server to serve web pages (select HTTP from the Services menu).
o All PCs on the network should be able to fetch a web page from the intranet server.
o The intranet server should not be directly accessible from the public internet (although you do not need to enforce this in Packet Tracer).
· Your client intends to host some services in the cloud. To achieve this they have chosen to use a packet-switched virtual-circuit from a service provider. The technology offered by the service provider is MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching).
o The MPLS connection is operated and managed by the service provider.
o Important note: MPLS does not provide encryption, as it runs over the provider’s backbone.
o Also note that Packet Tracer does not support MPLS.
§ Accordingly, this means that you should include the MPLS service in your report.
§ If your report includes a diagram, you should ensure that the MPLS connectivity is present on the diagram.
§ However, you will *not* be able to include MPLS in your Packet Tracer simulation.
Q1: Explain how your design balances efficient use of address space with the potential for future growth in both locations and users.
· Assume:
o Up to 20% growth in users at any site over the next five years.
o Up to two additional sites over the next five years.
· Discuss how the MPLS service supports scalability, performance, and availability.
Task 2: Network Security Risk Assessment and Controls (Final Report)
· MPLS WAN connectivity
Create a design that describes the WAN connections between sites using MPLS, based on your design from Task 1.
· Security risk assessment and controls
Perform. a security assessment for your client.
o Identify the assets in the client’s environment (e.g., servers, PCs, MPLS WAN links, intranet).
o For each asset, identify risks (e.g., unauthorized access, data leakage, service unavailability).
o Propose controls for each risk. Controls may include:
§ Cryptography (encryption for data-in-transit, VPN tunnels over MPLS, etc.),
§ Authentication and authorisation,
§ Firewalls and intrusion detection/prevention systems,
§ Redundancy and failover measures.
o Present your assessment in a table mapping each asset → risks → proposed controls.
Q2: Explain how your design and security controls ensure that:
· The data centre and intranet server remain available and resilient,
· Intranet traffic is isolated and protected despite MPLS not being encrypted,
· Risks such as unauthorized access and data leakage are appropriately mitigated.
Assessment
· For all questions in this assignment not only content but also report presentation will affect your mark.
· You will lose marks if there are problems with the presentation, particularly with clarity.
· This means that your answers to each question should be a coherent statement and that the spelling and grammar of your submission will be taken into account in assessing its presentation.
· For full marks, your answers should be well argued, clear, and coherent.
· The questions will be marked individually, the marks totalled, and a final grade assigned that is no more than indicated by the total marks, and no more than allowed by the standards specified above and in the unit outline.
Submission
· Submit on the iLearn page under ‘Assignments Section’. The report will be evaluated by TurnItIn.
o Turnitin cross checks for online papers and other student papers for any plagiarism (copying).
o In short –DO NOT COPY– or get others to do your assignment, we are pretty good at catching people out and the consequences can be severe.
o Do not trust anyone who will take money to do assignments. They can take money from several students, return the same assignment, and you get caught.
· Ensure that you read and adhere to the following instructions:
o As this is a networking unit you will be required to use IEEE referencing style.
§ Note that citation of a non-reliable source may incur a penalty (eg. Wikipedia).
§ Any use of AI or LLM technologies (eg. ChatGPT, CoPilot, etc.) must be cited.
§ Also note that failure to include citations is a form. of plagiarism.
§ Significant sanctions may apply to cases of plagiarism up to and including exclusion from further study towards your degree.
§ If you use any AI or LLM technology, you must include any prompts you have used as appendices.
§ Failure to include prompts as appendices will be considered a violation of the citation requirements, and hence misconduct.
§ Note, that these appendices will *not* contribute to your final page count.
o Your assignment will be submitted electronically via TurnItIn on the unit's iLearn page. Ensure that you adhere to the following requirements:
§ The filenames should be in the following format: (assuming your student ID is 44332211)
§ 44332211_design.pka (for the Packet Tracer file), and
§ 44332211_draft.docx (for your draft report)
§ 44332211_final_design.pka (for the final Packet Tracer file), and
§ 44332211_report.pdf (for your final report)
§ Your draft submission must be in Microsoft Word format -- do not submit a PDF file (or anything else other than docx).
§ Your final submission must be in PDF format -- do not submit a MS-Word file (or anything else other than PDF).
§ Do not include a separate cover sheet of any kind (a simple title page is fine though).
§ Do not include the text of any of the questions in your submission.
§ Do not use double-spacing.
§ Use a sensible, clean font, 10-12 pt in size.
§ Hand-written or scanned submissions will not be accepted.
§ Your report should not exceed 10 pages (excluding the references and appendices).
· Late submissions will incur a late penalty of 5% of the total mark per day or part thereof (please refer to the unit guide for details).