XYZ Corporation employs 40,000 people with, their own IP addresses, and operates over 400 servers including e-mail (SMTP and POP), FZTP, Web and SHCP at two locations: one in Muncie, Indiana, the other about 20 miles away in Hartford City. Dual T1 lines, for total aggregate bandwidth of 3,088 Mbps, link the two sites, and each site contains roughly half of the employees and servers. Perforce, each site operates on multiple, separate subnets inside a single Class B address that the company owns. Make a case for setting up a single, separate DNS server at each location, explaining how each might back up the other, and what benefits this might provide for XYZ Corporation users. Explain how the relative speed of the 100BaseT LANs used at each location compares to accessing the WAN link between the two sites.

Setting up a single separate DNS server at each location for XYZ Corporation can provide several benefits for the company's users. Let's discuss how each DNS server can back up the other and the advantages it brings.

1. Redundancy and High Availability: By having a DNS server at each location, XYZ Corporation ensures redundancy and high availability for its DNS services. If one DNS server becomes unavailable or experiences issues, the other DNS server can still respond to DNS queries and provide name resolution services. This ensures continuous access to the network resources, even if one location experiences downtime.

2. Load Distribution: With two DNS servers, XYZ Corporation can distribute the load between the two locations. DNS queries can be handled by the DNS server closest to the user, reducing the response time and improving overall network performance. This load distribution helps in avoiding bottlenecks and ensures faster and more reliable DNS resolution.

3. Faster Response Time: Another benefit of having a DNS server at each location is improved response time for local users. When a user at the Muncie location queries the DNS server in Muncie, they will experience faster response times compared to querying a DNS server located in Hartford City. This reduced latency enhances user experience and helps optimize network performance.

4. Better Disaster Recovery: In the event of a disaster or network outage at one location, having a DNS server at each site ensures that users can still access critical services from the operational site. If one location goes down, users at the other location can still reach the DNS server at their site, minimizing the impact on their ability to access network resources.

Regarding the speed of the LANs compared to accessing the WAN link between the two sites, it's important to note that LANs typically offer much higher speeds than WAN links. In this case, both locations are using 100BaseT LANs, which provide a maximum bandwidth of 100 Mbps. However, the WAN link between the sites is composed of dual T1 lines, which offer an aggregate bandwidth of 3,088 Mbps.

Therefore, the LAN speeds at each location (100BaseT) are significantly slower compared to the bandwidth available on the WAN link. This means that accessing resources within the LAN at each location would generally be faster than accessing resources on the other site over the WAN link. However, the overall speed could still be affected by various factors such as network congestion, server performance, and the specific tasks being performed.