Author: Neftaly Malatjie

After the new network is designed, the second phase of network administration begins, which involves setting up and configuring the network. This consists of installing the hardware that makes up the physical part of the network, and configuring the files or databases, hosts, routers, and network configuration servers.

The tasks involved in this phase are a major responsibility for network administrators. You should expect to perform these tasks unless your organization is very large, with an adequate network structure already in place.

The first phase in the life cycle of a network involves creating its design, a task not usually performed by new network administrators. Designing a network involves making decisions about the type of network that best suits the needs of your organization. In larger sites this task is performed by a senior network architect: an experienced network administrator familiar with both network software and hardware.

As a network administrator, your tasks generally fall into the following areas:

• Designing and planning the network
• Setting up the network
• Maintaining the network
• Expanding the network

Each task area corresponds to a phase in the continuing life cycle of a network. You might be responsible for all the phases, or you might ultimately specialize in a particular area, for example, network maintenance.

LAN administration is an arduous task and your responsibilities often involve many different aspects and may include many tasks. It may include such tasks as planning for network capacity, technology and capabilities, maintenance, backup and storage, technical documentation, troubleshooting, security and virus prevention as well as managing users.

• To provide:

  1. Performance Tuning – Improve service – proactively id & reduce bottlenecks, tune and optimize systems, improve QOS, optimize investments – id under/over utilized resources, balance workloads
  2. Trouble Shooting – Get out of crisis mode, id probs & start diagnosis/fixing before end user notices, increase reliability/availability, allow user to accomplish work more effectively and maximize productivity.
  3. Planning – understand performance trends for planning
  4. Expectations – set expectations for the Distributed System (from network thru applications) and see how well they are met
  5. Security
  6. Accounting

  What’s Changed that Makes Monitoring so Crucial now

  1. Distributed environment (client/server)
  • Critically relies on network to function.
  • very different from central environment, yet users expect as good or better

  Comparison of Old Environment to Distributed Environment
  Mainframe/Workstation	Distributed Environment
  One OS	Many OSs & dist. sys. services
  One local file system	Multiple distributed file systems
  In “Glass House”	All over site, mods by people with varying skills & responsibilities
  Mature diagnostics with vendor call in	Roll your own diagnostics & reports

  2. Network growth:
  • Extent/coverage of network increasing
  • Number of devices increasing exponentially (30-50% / year is typical)
  • Traffic doubling typically every 10-18 months
  • Technology to manage network is not growing as fast as network technology
  3. Complexity:
  • a typical ESnet site has:
    • products from about ten vendors, suppliers, carriers
    • ~ a dozen different configurable equipment types (routers, bridges, hubs, switches …)
    • ~ half dozen network management applications (NMS, trouble ticket, probe management …)
    • ~ 9 different vendor MIBs
    • 5 protocol suites (TCP/IP, DEC, AppleTalk, Netware,…_) typically routing 4 protocols, bridging 3 and tunnelling 2.
    • 9 server platforms (VMS, MacOS, AIX, SunOS, WNT …)
    • ~ 30 networked applications
  • this results in:
    • decreased support effectiveness
    • decreased QOS
    • inability to support existing & new applications
    • increased downtime, lost opportunity, user’s time wasted & security exposures
  4. Reduced Resources:
  • budgets increasingly constrained
  • few experienced personnel available, hard to retain after training So need simple to use, well integrated tools to automate network management and improve the productivity of existing personnel