MS Project Report on Implementing of Wireless LAN Security Using OPNET

Project Background 

Local Area Network (LAN) can be defined as a basic network topology that can be used to connect computers and few nodes to a limited geographical area like within a campus, organization, hospital and University. In general these LAN’s are building with very inexpensive hardware like Ethernet cables, network adapters, hubs and few workstations. Local area networks can be configured using special software components and once configured well, LAN can be used to for the networking purpose and the nodes connected across the LAN can share the data and information. Performance of LAN can be measured using different metrics and few of them are listed as below 

• Bandwidth
• Throughput
• Packet delivery ratio
• End-to-End delay 

All these metrics can be evaluated to define the performance of a LAN. In general the most common issues faced with the performance LAN, would be the load. Load across the LAN can be of different types and the most common among the load issues, the number if computers attached to the network. If the number of computers attached to the LAN is increased, gradually the performance of LAN is degraded and the expected performance of the LAN is affected a lot. There are different techniques to balance the load across the LAN and still it is research area to study the actual load balancing technique across the LAN. In general, across the LANs, whenever the data transmission process is done, the actual reliability of the data transmission depends on the number of workstations attached to the LAN and the performance of data transmission depends on the behavior of the LAN by gradually increasing the load on it. Data transmission performance can be measured using some metrics like the file uploading and downloading time, number of packets sent and received from a source to destination, client server communication overhead, traffic sent in bytes or traffic received in bytes. All these factors are the key attributes to measure the performance of LAN against the load on it and in general there exists a variation in the performance as stated across the literature studies. Topology of the network chosen also plays a vital role in determining the performance of LAN and in general STAR topology is proved to the best one to handle the load balancing issues with the LAN. When a LAN is simulated using any of the networking simulation tools like OPNET or NS2, initially a predefined set of workstations are added to the networks and all the required components are added and the required simulation set up is configured to test the scenarios considered. 

Aims and Objectives 

Following are the aims and objectives for this project 

Aim: To study the impact of increasing load on a LAN across different application like browsing, email, File print, File Transfer and Database access and compare the results. 

Objectives: 

• To critically review and investigate different networking models and evaluate the performance of LAN against increasing load
• To review different application that work on LAN and evaluate their performance against increasing load conditions
• To Simulate 5 scenarios with different load conditions and run the simulation to check the performance of application like Web browsing, Email usage, Database access, File print and File transfer
• To compare the results of 5 simulations and evaluate the best working application against varying load conditions
• To evaluate the results and notify the best application that works constantly irrespective of the varying load conditions. 

How the objective are achieved 

1. Literature review is prepared using the references like different networking articles, journals and IEEE transactions.
2. Review on different performance metrics of LAN using the above references
3. Required scenarios are designed with respect to different load conditions
4. A simple LAN is setup using the OPNET modeler initially with some number of nodes and different profiles are considered with respect to a university campus
5. The load across the LAN is increased by increasing the number of nodes and different applications are implemented against the profiles considered
6. All the designed scenarios are simulated against the performance metrics considered
7. Results are evaluated and compared against the scenarios considered and the performance of LAN against different load conditions is analyzed. 

Reason to choose this project 

I have done some research on LAN and simulated the LAN using OPNET IT guru previously but faced some issues with the load balancing conditions. In this project, I would like to evaluate the performance of LAN against different load conditions and evaluate the performance of the application performance of the LAN using OPNET.

 Resource Requirement 

Software requirements 

OPNET modeler 14.0 or later

Operating system: Windows 7 

Hardware requirements 

PROCESSOR        :    PENTIUM IV 2.6 GHz

RAM                    : 1 GB 

Project plan 

Task	Description	Start Date	End Date	Duration
Introduction	Basic introduction to the project along with the problem definition and aims and objectives are defined in this section.			1 week
Literature review	Following aspects are covered under literature review   Introduction to LAN Review on LAN performance and different performance metrics Review on load balancing issues across the LAN			4 weeks
Design	Following design aspects are covered under this section Scenarios design Parameters design			3 weeks
Simulation	Following aspects are covered under the implementation section Network setup Simulation of the scenarios Running the scenarios against the parameters			4 weeks
Evaluation of results	Results achieved after running the individual scenarios and after comparing the scenarios are explained in this chapter with reference to the aims and objectives of this project.			2 weeks
Conclusion and Future work	Conclusion from the total work done and the results evaluation is given and the better ways to improve the project in future are also explained.			1 week

 Deliverables 

Following are the project deliverables 

Initial report contain the below aspects 

• Project introduction and problem definition
• Review on LAN and different topologies across LAN
• Review on performance of LAN and corresponding issues 

Interim report contain the below aspects 

• Review on load balancing techniques across LAN
• Scenario design and the corresponding design procedure followed
• Explanation to different profiles and applications considered across LAN 

Final report contain the below aspects 

• Information from both the initial and interim report
• Detailed explanation to the scenario design
• Simulation procedure followed and detailed explanation to the scenario setup
• Evaluation of results
• Conclusion and future work 

Final product contain the below aspects 

• A simple LAN setup with varying load conditions
• Different profiles related to a university and the corresponding application definitions
• Evaluation of results