Riordan Manufacturing Telecommunications
Riordan Manufacturing Telecommunications
Riordan Manufacturing is a global manufacturer of plastic products and custom plastic parts. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Riordan has manufacturing facilities in Albany, Georgia, Pontiac, Michigan and Hangzhou, China. Riordan wishes to continue the company’s position as an industry leader within the plastics industry through a mission that includes maintaining an innovative, team based working environment, providing support and information for employees and sustaining the long-term profitability of the company.
In order to fulfill its mission, Riordan is requesting a review of the company’s telephone and data networks. The review will include a discussion of the existing telephony and computer networks. The review will also provide the advantages and disadvantages of the current system, recommendations for improving the telecommunications and data networks that will improve the business efficiency and capabilities of the system.
Existing Data Network
Riordan uses a wide area network (WAN) to connect its business locations together. The headquarters in San Jose is the main hub for the WAN. The Hangzhou, China manufacturing facility connects to the San Jose facility by a satellite link, while the Albany and Pontiac facilities connect to San Jose through fractional T1 circuits (Apollo Group, 2006, Information technology – Networks: Overview).
Note that a T1 circuit identifies a digital circuit with a capacity of 1,536 Kb/s. A T1 circuit includes 24 64Kb/s channels and can carry 24 voice connections, 24 data connections, or a combination of voice and data channels drawing from a channel bank. The channel bank is responsible for digitizing voice signals and mapping the digitized voice or data information onto the appropriate channels in the T1 (Watchel, 2008). Both fractional T1 circuits for Albany and Pontiac have a 256 Kbps committed information rate (CIR) and a 1,536 Kbps...
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