The basis of the information infrastructure of modern company is a local area network (LAN). Disadvantages of network infrastructure - low productivity, low reliability, poor security, the inability to scale - in sum affect the internal processes of the company and as a result the business processes. Since the local company network provides work & interconnection of applications, the failures in the network have a negative effect on all services and all staff which use the information infrastructure. In the worst case, failure of the central equipment of the local network, it is possible paralysis of the entire company - employees will not be able to send emails, accounts will not be able to work with financial instruments. Therefore it must be a careful approach in the construction or upgrading of company network infrastructure.

The main tasks in constructing the network infrastructure are:

• Provision of adequate performance, it should recognize that values of peak loads can be many times greater than their normal everyday meaning. It is also necessary to provide the necessary reserve capacity, estimating the potential growth of the company's needs.
• Scalable solutions, in modern conditions the structure of the company is changing rapidly, it is necessary that the network infrastructure is also changing rapidly, without damage to the budget and the work of the company.
• High availability ensuring. It is essential that company's infrastructure works as continuously as possible & failure of individual components was either negligible or quickly remedied.
• Providing information security. The network infrastructure must be compatible with existing enterprise security policies for access control, protection from internal and external attacks.
• Easy to use or control. Equipment and solutions, introduced in the network infrastructure must be easily managed, have the ability to quickly diagnose and replace. Do not require excessive administrative costs.
• Provision of services to different types of traffic. The network infrastructure of the modern enterprise must be capable of functioning of integrated applications that provide for the transfer in addition to normal data, voice and video with the required quality.
• Economy. Reducing the cost of implementation and ownership of the network infrastructure.

    In addition to the above problems, every enterprise, while creating the infrastructure can deliver more, depending on the nature of their business processes.  

Fig. Template for a small business network

Fig. Template for large enterprise network

Fig. Wiring equipment to the corporate network

    Today, CIO's of companies to decide whether they should introduce technology VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks). Let's see what VLAN technology is and how it applies.
    Conventional Ethernet switches provide a simple device connection with the possibility of rapid processing of traffic based on network address. They can increase network bandwidth, but do not create a reliable barrier to the erroneous and unwanted traffic. A classic example is the traffic generated by broadcasts faulty network node. There are other situations where the traffic should be filtered for reasons of data protection from unauthorized access or simply to share information flow. Prior to the massive use of the VLAN switches the problem of erecting barriers to unwanted traffic was solved by splitting the network in physically disconnected segments and combining them with the routers.
    Virtual networks - a more flexible mechanism for segmenting the network, originally running on segments physically separated by routers. Customizable on one Catalyst switch, they can physically separate subnets on certain ports.

    For example, the switch ports 1, 2 and 5 can be configured with a VLAN network address A, and at ports 3, 4 and 10 with a VLAN network address B.
    The question arises: what prevents to establish two networks with different addresses on a regular switch?
    This is entirely feasible, but in this case, these subnets will still be in the same physical environment, that does not eliminate the problem of reducing the broadcast messages and protection against unauthorized access.

Fig. Network segment with autonomous access points.

    The possibility of massive use of wireless networks appeared relatively recently, the key moment was the adoption of standards 802.11a and 802.11b in 1999. Wireless networks are an alternative to existing wired and somewhere they can be totally replaced, but the practice shows that when you create a wireless network should pay great attention to their pre-planning - design. Consider the main benefits of wireless networking in comparison with their wired competitors.

• Wireless network can save on cabling & they are virtually non-alternative if it impossible to make a wired access.
• Wireless networks provide a high degree of mobility of users, opportunity to move freely within a single domain. Also advantage is the ability for rapid network deployment and relocation.
• Connection speed is high enough and comparable with wired solutions, with proper design can provide the necessary bandwidth for users with any requirements - data, video, telephony.

CISCO Systems equipment allows you to create enterprise controlled wireless networks of any complexity using the most modern security standards. These networks can serve as a basis for the introduction of virtually any enterprise information infrastructure services - data, voice, video, and the performance of Wi-Fi network will be comparable to that of wired network standards-based Ethernet.

    Hot-spot - an organization of wireless access to the Internet via Wi-Fi technology in public places such as cafes, restaurants, hotels, clubs, airports. Customers of these institutions have the opportunity to read the news and to correspond by e-mail using a laptop or PDA, just behind the coffee shop or in hotel room. Businessmen can access the information they need, while at the restaurant or fitness center that allows them to take timely business decisions, regardless of whether they are on a business lunch or in the hall of the airport.
Our company provides a full range of services to create a hot-spot:

• Pre-project survey (Site Survey) of the Customer's object to identify features that may affect the distribution of the signal, and the detection of interfering access points.
• Draft wireless infrastructure to meet the requirements for security, manageability and ease of use.
• Selection and delivery of certified equipment meets the requirements of the Customer.
• Installation and configuration of equipment in accordance with the project at the site of the Customer.

    The deployment of hot-spot provides additional benefits to owners of hotels, cafes and restaurants:

• Attract additional and often more "prosperous" customers.
• Allows more revenue from advertising and additional services.
• Allows expanding the range of services offered to clients.

    The cost of Internet traffic is reduced day by day, no longer makes sense to use expensive dedicated communication channels, which put the company in reliance on a single operator. VPN technology creates virtual communication channels through public networks, so-called "VPN-tunnels". Traffic passing through the tunnels that connect remote offices is encrypted. The attackers, catching encrypted information, won't be able to view it, because they do not have decryption keys.
    VPN-tunnels for users are absolutely transparent. For example, an employee representative in St. Petersburg has access to data located in Moscow as easily as the data in his office.
    Frequent and lengthy phone calls between central offices and representations lead to large non-optimized costs of long distance communication.
    Technology Voice-over-IP (VoIP) allows you to send voice traffic over Internet networks, bypassing traditional expensive operators. Voice-enabled-CISCO gateways allow you to insert the voice packets from PBX in a common IP-traffic transmitted between company offices.

The advantages of using VPN and VoIP technologies:

• Using VPN technology you can connect all remote offices into a single local area network, providing an easy way to access data in conjunction with security.
• In addition to reducing the costs of long-distance calls is being introduced and a set of short numbers. All remote offices of the company fit into the overall corporate telephone network.
• In a fully converged solution using CISCO voice gateways in conjunction with the office PBX is possible to make phone calls using VoIP, not only between the offices, but also between the telephone networks of the cities.

    Firewall Cisco Secure Private Internet Exchange (PIX) Firewall allows you to realize the protection of corporate networks to previously unattainable levels, with easy to use. PIX Firewall can provide absolute security on the internal network, completely hiding it from the outside world.
Benefits:

• High performance.
  Firewall Cisco Secure PIX Firewall supports over 500,000 simultaneous connections and, accordingly, provides support for hundreds or thousands of users without compromising performance. Fully loaded PIX Firewall can provide bandwidth up to 1.0 Gb / s, i.e. significantly higher than any firewall based on the UNIX operating system or Microsoft Windows NT.



• Ease of use.
  Firewall Cisco Secure PIX Firewall provides a low cost of use and maintenance. Users without special training can quickly configure it using a simple graphical frontend PIX Device Manager (PDM), which is accessed using a conventional web-browser. PDM - is an application that uses the http-server built into the PIX, and maintains a basic set of commands needed for the initial firewall configuration. PDM allows you to configure PIX Firewall with virtually any computer, to protect the device from "hacking" when configuring the user can use the SSL protocol.



• IP-addresses shortage problem resolution.
  Firewall Cisco Secure PIX Firewall also avoids the problem of lack of addresses in the expansion and changing IP-based networks. The technology of Network Address Translation (NAT) makes it possible to use a private network of existing addresses, and reserve address spaces. For example, it allows you to use only one real external IP-address for 64 thousand nodes inside the private network. PIX can also be configured for sharing translated and non-translated addresses, allowing you to use the address space of private IP-based networks, and registered IP-address. Currently, users are offered the following models of hardware and software firewalls Cisco Secure PIX Firewall - PIX 501, 506E, 515E, 525 and 535.