Assignment 1 – FIT9135 S2 2019


Submission instructions
Deadline: 21 September 2019 (11:59pm)
Submission format: PDF only. You can use any freely available PDF
converter or lab computer to make a PDF file from an editable one.
Submission platform: Upload via Turnitin assignment on Moodle.
Late submissions:
• via special consideration request
• or, without special consideration request, you lose 10% of your mark per day
that you submit late. Submissions will not be accepted more than 3 days
late.

Plagiarism:
This is an individual assignment. Group work is not allowed.
It is an academic requirement that your submitted work be original.
Zero marks will be awarded for the whole submission if there is any evidence
of copying, collaboration, pasting from websites, or copying from textbooks.

Further Note: When you are asked to use Internet resources to answer a
question, this does not mean copying and pasting text from websites. Write
answers in your own words such that your understanding of the answer is
evident.

Marks:
• The overall assignment is worth 20% of your unit marks.
• Part A is marked out of 50 nominal marks and worth 12.5% of your unit
marks.
• Part B is marked out of 35 nominal marks and worth 7.5% of your unit
marks.






















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Part A. Technical Report

Below you will find a (fictitious) scenario. Assume that you work for the company below,
and write a technical report for a customer of the company, evaluating different
technologies to meet the customer’s networking requirements.
The rest of this specification is organised into two parts: 1) the scenario, which explains
the situation of the (imaginary) company you work for, and 2) the instructions how you
should approach this task.

1. Scenario

Your role / company overview: You are a consultant working for SmartCampus.AU,
a start-up company with around 10 employees in Melbourne. The company offers
design and implementation of “Smart Campus” systems. Its customers are university
departments and other education providers that want to modernise their computing
infrastructure. The company you work for provides consulting services that help
institutions deliver enhanced students’ experience through providing a safe, secure,
comfortable and productive learning environment.
Your customer is Melbourne Technology University (MTU), a local university with
around 8,000 students. MTU is evaluating whether to change from a model where
students learn in computer labs to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model, where
students use their own laptops. Your task is to provide a report on the networking
aspects of this project.
Requirements:
1. Your technical report should include several options for the clients: a) keeping
the existing computer labs, b) switching to BYOD, and c) providing each student
with a loan laptop for the time they are enrolled.
2. MTU wants to assess what kind of networking technology is required, both at the
hardware and software level. They want to understand the advantages and
disadvantages of BYOD on their network.
3. Many courses at MTU require special software. Propose different solutions to
this problem, such as software-as-a-service, virtualisation, license managers, or
switching to open source software instead.
Your task:
In order to write the technical report, you will need to do some research into BYOD
strategies and technology such as SaaS, virtualisation etc. You can be very creative
here. Your report does not have to cover all possible areas, just pick some that fit well
together and that you find interesting.

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Research and analysis expected in the technical report:
• MTU expects you to give them enough arguments to convince their management, in
particular with respect to costs and benefits of the proposed new technologies.
• Go into some technical detail to explain differences between technologies. It will be
useful to create tables and figures for some of the comparisons. You can answer
questions such as
o What devices are involved in each option and what are their functions?
o How can the devices be controlled and updated? E.g. is it possible to remotely
lock/unlock, update software, etc?
o What kind of (wired and wireless) network technology would be required for the
different technology options?
• A conceptual high level diagram showing how the proposed technologies could be
integrated within the university network.

2. Instructions

Writing reports is an essential aspect of any IT career. You will be expected to deliver
reports that are accurate and factual, that provide evidence for your findings, and that
look professional.
Before you start
Before starting to write, think about your audience, i.e., who is reading the report?
Don’t write for your tutors. Write for your customer! Carefully read the marking rubric
on Moodle to find out what we expect you to write for the different grades.
Sources and referencing
Any claims or recommendations that you make should be substantiated with
supporting references. That means that you cannot just claim that A is better than B,
you have to argue why that is the case and point to external sources that can serve
as evidence.
You can use the unit’s textbook and other standard literature as sources, but you will
also need to use additional documentation to find all the technical information and
commercial details for this report. Here are a few pointers to get you started. You do not
need to read all of these, they are just suggestions for your own literature research:
• A Virtualisation Solution for BYOD
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7006388
• Data Centre Network Virtualisation
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6308765
• Overview of Virtualisation in Cloud Computing
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7570950
• What is a Private Cloud
https://www.rackspace.com/en-au/library/what-is-a-private-cloud
• What is a Virtualisation
https://www.vmware.com/au/solutions/virtualization.html
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Whenever you use material from an external source, make sure that you reference that
source. You also need to assess the quality and reliability of the source – e.g., a
company might say that their product is better than the competition’s, but you cannot
easily trust them. An independent expert review of different technologies is much more
trustworthy.
You should use the APA referencing style, which is explained in detail here:
http://intranet.monash.edu.au/infotech/resources/students/style-guide/referencing.html
Marks are deducted for poor referencing.
Presentation
Your report should look professional, which means you need to pay attention to
spelling, punctuation, grammar. It is important that your report has a clear structure.
There is a strict limit of five pages plus one title page, with a font size of at least 10pt.
The page limit includes all images, tables, references etc. Any text beyond the page
limit will not be marked. You can find a sample report structure on Moodle.
Tips
You can find great tips on how to write a report on Monash’s web pages. Here is a link
to get started:
Language and Learning Online web site:
https://www.monash.edu/rlo

Part B. WLAN Design and Security

For this task, you will perform a WLAN site survey. Your task is to produce a map of
(part of) a building that gives an overview of the wireless networks that are available, as
well as an analysis of the network.
What you will need: a WiFi-enabled laptop (some smartphones also work, see below),
and a place to scan. You can perform a survey of your home, of an office space, of
parts of the Monash campus, or inside a shopping centre. If you don’t own a suitable
device that you could use for this activity, please try to borrow one from a friend, or
contact us to figure out an alternative.
This activity has two sub-tasks:
a) Survey

Create a map of the place you want to survey. A simple floorplan will be
sufficient, it doesn’t have to be perfectly to scale. See the appendix for an
example. Your survey should cover an area of at least 60 square meters (e.g.
6x10 meters, or 4x15, or two storeys of 6x5 each). Be creative – the survey can
include hallways or outside areas. Be sure to take the analysis in part b) into
account, by designing your survey to include walls, door etc. it will be easier to
write something interesting in part b).
Furthermore, your survey must include at least three WiFi access points.
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These can be your own, but can also include neighbours’ APs. If you are
scanning in a commercial area or on campus, you should be able to see enough
APs. If you want, you can create an additional AP with a phone (using “Personal
hotspot” or “Tethering” features).

For the survey, use a WLAN sniffing tool (see below) at at least eight different
locations on your map. For each location, record the technical characteristics of
all visible APs. Depending on the scanning tool you use, you can record features
such as the network name, MAC address, signal strength, signal to noise ratio
(SNR), 802.11 version(s) supported, band (2.4 or 5 GHz) and channel(s) used.

Add the data gathered from the survey into the map of the covered area. On the
map you should indicate the location of the access points and the locations
where you took measurements.
For the access points, use the actual location if you know it, or an approximation
based on the observed signal strength (e.g. if it’s your neighbour’s access point
and you don’t know exactly where it is).
For each measurement point, you can either add the characteristics directly into
the map, or create a separate table with the details. You can submit several
maps if you choose to enter data directly into the maps, or a single map if you
use additional tables. Create the map yourself, do not use the mapping features
available in some commercial (i.e., paid) WLAN sniffing tools.
(15 marks)

b) Write a report (word limit 600) on your observations analysing the data collected
in the previous step. Your analysis should investigate the following aspects:
• Channel occupancy: Are different access points competing on the same
channels? Are they configured to use overlapping channels? Could the
configuration be improved?
(5 marks)
• Interference from walls, doors etc.: How do different materials affect signal
strength and/or noise? Can you notice a difference in attenuation for
different APs? (5 marks)
• Coverage: Do the access points sufficiently cover the desired area? Could
the placement or configuration be improved? (5 marks)
• Any other aspect of your own choice. Here are a few suggestions:
o measure the attenuation caused by your own body
o measure the download and upload speeds in different locations
o determine the overlap that has been implemented to enable roaming
o describe how you interpolated the locations of access points from the
signal strengths
Describe your findings and explain them with some technical detail (i.e., not
only say what you found, but also how you performed the analysis or why
you think the network is behaving that way).
(5 marks)
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Tools: You can use e.g. Acrylic Wifi (https://www.acrylicwifi.com/en/) for Windows,
NetSpot (http://www.netspotapp.com) for Mac OS and Windows, and LinSSID or
wavemon for Linux. If you have an Android smartphone, apps like Wifi Analyzer can
also be used. On iOS, WiFi scanning apps do not provide enough detail, so iPhones
won’t be suitable for this task.
For drawing the site maps, any drawing tool should work, for example LucidChart, or
even presentation tools such as PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. Scans of hand-
drawn maps are acceptable if they are neat and easily readable.

Appendix: Example Floorplan/Map

This is just to give you an idea of the level of detail required in the floorplan / map. In
addition to the map, your survey would have to include tables that contain details and
measurements for the indicated locations.


Dimensions: 10 m (width), 6 m (height)
Red circles: locations of access points
Blue circles: locations of measurements