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-Head Office Project-
-Overview-
The goal of this project was to build a new head office network for one of the UK's largest companies (company name confidential). The building is to be the base for hundreds of employees spread across 3 levels. All design and implementation was carried out working 100% remotely, alongside onsite technical teams. All Cisco Catalyst switches and Fortigate Firewalls were ordered through our market place.
-Objectives-
Produce HLD & LLD
Allow for network High Availability
Segmentation between teams
Secure and stable WIFI
Plan for future growth
-Solution-
To acheive our objectives we implemented a duel multihomed design using Foritinet SDWAN for IPSLA and failover.
A HA pair of Fortigate 601F’s as the core of the network, hosting user network SVI’s and acting as a Wireless LAN Controller.
For aggregation, we configured a pair of Cisco C9500 switches utilising Switch Virtual Link for redundancy and simplification.
At the access layer we decided on 21 Cisco 9200L switches with Cisco StackWise to facilitate client connectivity.
Finally for the wireless, we incorporated 802.1x with radius authentication on the corporate SSID. The AP of choice was a FortiAP 431F which worked and integrated seamlessly with the Fortigate.
-Outcome-
With the solution above now in place the business benefited greatly.
Business stakeholders are in full operational confidence as the network is redundant in the event of an ISP, firewall or switch failure.
On site Network engineers no longer need to worry about tricky protocols such a spanning tree due to the MCLAG distribution design.
Users and wider business benefit from the increased wireless security. This also allows for the increasing use of hot desking as staff will be on their specific team network wherever they are in the building.
Future growth is no longer a concern as access switches now have 50Gbps of aggregated uplink through put.