Design and Simulation of a Secured Enterprise Network Architecture for All Departments at East Africa University (EAU), Somalia

Computer network technology can support educational institutions in exchanging, managing, and delivering digital data over network nodes. Educational institutions play an important role in health, technology, science, and engineering research. Therefore, it is essential for educational institutions to have their own internet access and control their security, stability, and manageability. This study focuses on providing a secure, scalable, and available enterprise network for all departments of the East Africa University (EAU), Somalia. Such a project no one has mad, after successful implementation in a simulation university, has built this design, which is currently being used. In this project, we propose a secure campus network with both a physical and logical topology network infrastructure. The simulation was performed using Graphical Network Simulator-3 (GNS3), which is mostly used to test complex networking scenarios. We configured communication network devices including switches, routers, and FortiGate firewalls to provide availability and manageability to enhance the performance and network security of all departments at EAU University. Furthermore, we configured security features, including port security, DHCP snooping, VLAN hopping attacks (by disabling VLAN1), unused switch ports, disabling the CDP protocol, dynamic trunk protocols (DTP) on all access and trunk ports, password management, access control, and managing unnecessary services to mitigate both LAN and WAN attacks. The results showed that the connectivity between all end devices and network devices was successful. Similarly, security features and weak password restrictions were tested and verified. The commands used in the simulation can be used for further studies and deployment at other educational institutions.