if further training will be needed for any future upgrades. The third study will focus on the economic aspect of the upgrade. What will this upgrade cost BTI? Can BTI afford to upgrade at this time? Will the upgrade hold any economical benefits for BTI? If the studies show that an upgrade of BTI's network is necessary, we will begin installing and replacing within the next six months. Arrangements must be made with the system analysts to determine if there will be any interruption of our service during this upgrade. As it stands now we are predicting that the entire process will take at least six weeks.
             The network at BTI was installed on June 22, 1991. Originally the network used 10 base 5 line in an ARCnet (Attached Resource Computer Network). Each workstation was connected to the file server with the 10base5 line. The software used at each workstation was a Unix based operating system. In 1995 BTI replaced the 10base5 line with thinner 10baseT line. This provided a faster data speed. Our network, which previously ran at 16Mbps, now ran at 20Mbps. Also, in 1995 the topology was changed to Ethernet bus topology. The bus topology meant that the various nodes were interconnected. At both ends of the bus were 50-ohm terminating resistors, which prevented the signal from being reflected back once it reached the end. In May of 1995, Windows released Windows 95. Within three weeks, BTI had upgraded all workstations to Windows 95. Windows 95 had many new features, which were incorporated for network use. This allowed BTI to run many more applications while not slowing down the network performance.
             Because the scope of BTI's services does not extend into the network analysis area, the company does not have network professionals on staff. It is policy at BTI to hire an outside contractor to perform any company's network analysis. There were many factors that went into the deciding which networking consonant to award the contract too. The...