Designing a Cost-Efficient Network for a Small Enterprise

Reducing the cost of running a computer internet network in business cannot be over emphases in this current time of rising inflation. This paper assesses the cost of running an existing small enterprise network, called BCT Services Ltd, and suggests ways of reducing them. This will be done by; the introduction of solar panel, change in more scalable and less costly hardware, using more wireless access point in some areas and a different topology that is less costly to run. These changes have been designed in a proposed network scenario with Cisco Packet Tracer software for comparison with the existing one in the enterprise. In this paper, the parameter of interest is to know if the changes in the proposed network scenario will bring about the same amount of throughput in data or more. Our analyses and evaluations show that the proposed network scenario was more cost-efficient, as there was an improvement of over 100% data throughput compared with the current network, a cost savings of over £5,000 for five years period and other benefits like; reduce environmental pollution benefit from the solar panel.