The dream job

You landed a dream job as a network administrator for a large regional hospital. Your first assignment was to oversee the design and installation of network services in a new four-story physicians office building planned for construction. The responsibility for all network services, from capacity planning to integration with the existing network to installation and configuration of the switches and routers, was yours.

You attended the first project meeting, where architects met with the hospital administration to determine needs, costs and design layout desires. A few weeks later you received the first set of drawings from the architect with data jack locations noted as dictated by the eventual tenants' needs. From this you designed the network.

The architect had provisioned in the drawings a communications closet per floor, and you determined the number and type of switches needed for each closet based on the quantity of cables terminated per closet. You obtained a quote from the hospital's network equipment vendor and submitted the projected costs for the network electronics.

You obtained a quote for running single-mode fiber-optic cable from one of the hospital core distribution centers to the new building's first-floor closet, designated as the building's Main Distribution Frame (MDF). The interior data copper cabling as well as the single-mode fiber-optic cables from the MDF to each communications closet were are included as part of the construction bid, so you didn't include these costs.