Jerry is a relatively new member of a project team that is developing a retail store management system for a chain of sporting goods stores. Company headquarters is in Las Vegas, and the chain has twenty-seven locations throughout Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. Several cities have multiple stores.

The new system will be a networked client–server architecture. Stores will be linked to one of three regional servers, and the regional servers will be linked to corporate headquarters in Las Vegas. The regional servers also link to one another. Each retail store will be outfitted with similar configurations of two PC-based point-of-sale terminals networked to a local file server. Jerry has been given the task of developing a network model that will document the geographic structure of this system. He has not faced a system of this scope before and is a little unsure how to begin.

a. Prepare a set of instructions for Jerry to follow in developing this network model.

b. Using a deployment diagram, draw a network model for this organization.

c. Prepare a set of instructions for Jerry to follow in developing a hardware and software specification.