Navy Marine Corps Intranet (student project)

My students are working on evaluating and re-designing something some of you all might have experience with. Follow this link to get to my blog and find the presentations and documentation they've done so far on their project. Some caveats is that they are doing this all from open source literature, none of them have been in the Marine Corps, they set the scope of the project on the fly, they are following a standardized development strategy supported by Cisco, and they've already identified a bunch of assumptions that were wrong. The course is about identifying and designing an enterprise network with little in the way of background.

It would be great to get some feedback from the user community should you wish to yell, laugh, or help them out.

My students finished their project you can get to the project files from my BLOG. Sorry don't mean to spam you with it, but I'd really like to here from anybody who takes a look at it.

http://selil.com/?p=125

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Originally Posted by selil

My students finished their project you can get to the project files from my BLOG. Sorry don't mean to spam you with it, but I'd really like to here from anybody who takes a look at it.

http://selil.com/?p=125

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But if it's as detailed as it looks then I think any point you might have been trying to make; will have been made rather succinctly.

Did anybody ever get a chance to read the final version? I get about half a dozen hits a day from this thread on the second phase just wondering if anybody had any feedback.

Sam;

I just skimmed through the POC document but these are the off the top of my head questions I would ask if this was being presented to my bank.

I do not expect my questions answered.

Pg 18 should this not be apx 600 for ships

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For current ships there are around 284 ships that will use servers
On subs they will only need one and one backup. On carriers and super carriers they will have 2 and 2 for backup. For the
other ships they will carrier 1 and 1 backup for and approximate of 300 servers.

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pg 21/22 is wireless really an option for a ship? Wouldn't the steel be an issue or would additional access points be needed?

Software/OS
No discussion of MS "planned" and ever moving date to end of support for XP. Than what?
How much will it cost to move to $%$ Vista?
Why not suck it up and go with $%$ Vista first? (I have a few issues with $%$ Vista - if you have not picked up on it.)

Who still uses Lotus Note/Domino?

Why even go with MS office? Why not Linux open office? Why not go with Linux instead of XP?

You are looking to buy quad 4 boxes is there no need/desire for VM?

Deployment Plan
Will you be loading the software item by item or using pre-configured images? How long - wall time - will it take to load all the software?

Other
Why not use biometric security for laptops for example a finger print reader?
Same question for workstations.
Will you be closing off USB ports or have device restrictions for better security?
What about blackberry type devices? Are these used for email?
Will the training be train the trainers? What is the plan to train folks after the first round of training (when everybody is trained) is completed?

Final Comment
Presentation is MILES better than what I have seen from consulting companies. (TCS, Bearingpoint, and Fidelity - have all been resent presenters.)

Regards;
mah

I am so happy to see somebody read it and asked questions. The students worked hard, but it was outside their area of comfort.

Some general answers.

The students heavily weighed in as looking at Linux/open source however the requirements that we found said that was not an option for wide spread adoption. I have to be careful as I do not use microsoft products except for Word. I am an Apple User so I taint their decision processes. In the end they followed what requirements they found. Also the training issue could be a problem.

Vista is a non-starter. Our testing, and a variety of third party testing make it to expensive to implement. Along with Vista you have a general requirement (suggested) to replace every computer too.

Virtual Server is always an option, but single threads possible fail over or wide spread failure versus single use servers. It was suggested though. We use Virtual Machines heavily in our laboratory and cyber warfare environments.

Biometrics are a non-starter too. To many issues with the enrollment process. It also isn't as secure as you think. We've gotten past it in several implemenations.

I took Blackberry off the table, as well as iPhone and other mobile devices. The servers to accomplish this are pretty trivial and would tie into most mail systems easily. Securing it isn't as trivial but there is a new secure RIM device.

Training is explicity train the trainers. We looked at future follow up training and discussed it but to be honest like in many projects it fell off the table due to time.

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Presentation is MILES better than what I have seen from consulting companies. (TCS, Bearingpoint, and Fidelity - have all been resent presenters.)

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These were undergraduate students. They all are talented and very much still looking for work! ;) :D

Thank you again for looking at what they did.

OS might become more possible once OpenOffice 3 is released. It's supposed to be compatible with that stupid .docx thing Microsoft came out with, and also has a pdf editing capability.

docx is evil. It allows for an enclosed binary. The docx file is actually a cabinet or folder file. We used to make viruses do that. Docx should be banned. Of course Apple pages is a similar format but no binary capability. I have a post about it on my blog. Most people say so what though.

Agree 110% about docx, but since it's out there OO has decided to deal with it. On the plus side, it makes their suite more accessible to folks who might have been trapped with MSO prior to that.

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Originally Posted by selil

Did anybody ever get a chance to read the final version? I get about half a dozen hits a day from this thread on the second phase just wondering if anybody had any feedback.

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And have been trying to go through it. But I'm looking for input from some friends who are more familiar with that line of work to get beneficial feedback.

I hate NMCI......huge waste of money....never works...bad support....

I hate it

to someone with a much more relevant perspective on the things involved and will let you know when I hear back from them. From what I got through I thought you did an excellent job of piecing it together in a common sense and expandible format( For what thats worth comin from lil ol me):D