Project Review 1

Project Review 1

The project has successfully been done though it is at its testing stage, i can confidently say the project is almost there. Due to the nature of the project, there were so many obstacles in the way but all these obstacles were successfully dealt with.

The original client requirements for this project was to have a working network with three cisco routers, two networks (subnetted) and the computers accessing internet through the router. The client had only one IP address (10.0.224.11) given to them by their ISP. All computers will access internet through this IP address. The client then decided that they want to use IP class C for the private internal network so that all computers will have IP address like 192.168.1.xxx. Also the client wanted a client-Server network so that all computers can be monitored from the server and that software can be deployed from the server. The picture below shows the initial plan of the project as requested by the client.

Due to some difficulties along the way, I had a meeting with the client and decided that the IP address class C is not enough to accommodate all the clients on the network in case of future expansion. The decision made was to use IP class B (172.16.0.1) which has more usable IP address and it will be comfortable for future expansion of the network. This meant that all configurations done with the IP 192.168.1.1 will have to be changed to 172.16.0.1 and this wasn’t easy to do. From the main router (internet router), all configuration were erased and done again from scratch.

This change made me contact an expert Michael Simms to help out with the new configuration but it was too difficult and ambitious so he advised that we have one router network and a switch in-between the router and the computers, the computers will access the internet through the router and a server to manage all the computers. The picture below shows the new network diagram with the computers and server.

                                                                                                                                    

This is the current progress of the project as agreed by the client. the internet router has been configured and can access the internet, all client computers has operating system running and connected to a domain(CISCONETWORK) created on the server. The domain will serve as a container to monitor all the clients computers connected to them.

Use of Effective Communication

During my project i have had to maintain communication with my client to update them on the progress of the project and ask if they are happy so far with the progress and also if there is any changes. Maintaining contact with my client was very difficult as they were very busy and also it was almost impossible to get my client to sit down with mw to discuss the project. So most of the time, we communicate through emails which i found very useful because then i can communicate with them at any time of the day.

There were four main major client/stakeholders meeting schedule on my project plan to take place along the line but we had more than four due to the nature of the project and how specific the client were about the deliverables each day. The major meetings were schedule to last about an hour of two but the mini meetings that i had with my clients some took about 10 minutes. The picture below shows an email communication between me and my client.

There was also the use of verbal communication which wasn’t recorded but because my client was in the same building as myself, i had the advantage of meeting them and talking to them about the project. There was the use of email communication to communicate between myself and my co-project manager John Whitter. John was managing the other side of the project because the project was too big for one person to manage.