Lab 3: Game Day Network Design

Your school is hosting a regional esports tournament with a live audience and an online livestream. Plan a segmented network that supports every device and user type, build it in a simulator, and present an event network document the tournament director can sign off on.

The situation

Players, coaches, judges, event staff, a livestream crew, and hundreds of spectators will all connect on game day. A slow or dropped connection could disrupt the stream, delay matches, or even change the outcome of the competition. The event team has given you the venue details, user groups, and performance needs. Determine the devices, connections, and segments for a flawless setup.

Starter files

• Event brief: venue, user groups, equipment, addressing, director's rules (.txt)
• AI-generated design draft to evaluate (.txt)
• Event network document template (Word)
• Packet Tracer build sheet: VLANs, gateways, DHCP, ACL (.txt)

Team roles

Teams of three: the project lead also keeps documentation. Teams of five: add an AI liaison who writes the prompts and leads the evaluation of AI output. Rotate roles from lab to lab so that every student does each job once.

Walkthrough

Part 1: Devices and connections (Day 1)

1. Make a device list by user role. For each role, name the endpoint device and justify it (for example, why tablets fit judges who walk the stage).
2. Assign every device a connection type, wired or wireless, and justify it with the brief: which devices need high reliability, low latency, or large transfers?
3. Count the wired devices and determine the number of switches and ports, remembering the reserved uplink port. Count wireless devices in each space and determine the number of WAPs. The concrete wall matters.

Part 2: Evaluate the AI draft (Day 1)

1. Read the AI-generated design. For each numbered item, decide whether it is workable, overcomplicated or too costly, missing a requirement, or technically wrong. Check the subnets carefully.
2. Rewrite the volunteer's prompt so that it includes the technical requirements an AI tool would need: user groups and counts, traffic needs, security rules, redundancy needs, and the physical layout. Run your new prompt and note what improved and what you still had to fix.

Part 3: Segments and subnets (Day 2)

1. Choose your segments (VLANs) and say what separates them: risk, user type, or performance. At least players, production (stream and server), judges, coaches, staff, and spectators need to be considered. You may combine groups if you justify it against the director's rules.
2. Divide 10.60.0.0/24 into the smallest subnets that fit each segment. For each one, record the network address, mask (CIDR and dotted decimal), gateway, usable range, and broadcast address. Subnets must not overlap.
3. Decide which devices get static addresses (server, cameras, management workstation) and where DHCP is used.

Part 4: Wireless and firewall rules (Day 3)

1. Plan the SSIDs: which segments get wireless, the SSID names, WPA3 or WPA2, and the guest network settings that meet the director's rule 2.
2. Write firewall rules in the course format (rule number, ALLOW or DENY, direction, protocol, port, source, destination) that enforce rules 2–4. Put specific rules above broad ones and end with deny-by-default. Name the ports: HTTPS 443, DNS 53, SSH 22.

Part 5: Build, verify, and document (Days 4–5)

1. Build a scaled-down version in Packet Tracer using the build sheet: VLANs, access and trunk ports, one gateway per VLAN, and a spectator SSID.
2. Verify with show vlan brief, ping within and between segments, and the spectator ACL test. Screenshot each result for your document.
3. Complete the event network document: device list by role; connection types; a segmentation diagram that separates user types; switch, port, and WAP counts; the subnet table; SSIDs and firewall rules; and the justifications.

Deliverable rubric

Walkthrough video

Teachers: a model design, subnet table, rule set, and the AI-draft evaluation are in the teacher area.