Network Managemement Articles

Environmental Management

Environmental Monitoring - A Server Room Essential? - Environmental monitoring is essential in your server & comms rooms. Environmental conditions have a huge impact on how reliable and long lived your servers, switches and routers will be.
Environmental Monitoring - Data Center Recommendations - Stable environmental conditions are vital to reliable operation of your data center. This article explains the areas that you should be concerned about and provides best practice guidelines.
Recommended Server Room Temperature - An exploration of the recommended server room temperature and the issues surrounding maintaining the recommended temperature.
Calculating The Size of a Server Room Air Conditioner - This article is a quick guide to how to work out your requirements for an air conditioning unit for your Server Room or Data Center.
Computer Room Temperature - Today’s computers generate vast amounts of heat as a by product of their operation. Without monitoring your computer room temperature you could cause irreparable damage to your computers.
Skimp on Server Room Air Conditioning? At Your Peril - Makes a pretty good case for not skimping on your air conditioning costs
Wetness Monitoring - Why bother? - Wetness monitoring is the Cinderella of the monitoring world. It never fails to amaze me how few people deploy any kind of effective wetness monitoring, and how many have had experience of floods and leaking pipes in their server room.
Wetness Monitoring - Care of Probes - The Environmental Monitor EM1 addresses wetness monitoring in a more sophisticated way than most wetness monitoring products. The Sensatronics range of probes do not just alarm on wet or not wet conditions, rather there is a wetness scale from 1 to 100, representing different levels of ’wetness’.
Network Thermometer Introduction - A Network Thermometer permanently attached to your Ethernet (IP network) and constantly reporting measurements is one of the most cost effective measures you can take to safeguard the security of your company data network
Alternating Hot and Cold Aisles Provides More Reliable Cooling for Server Farms - by Robert F. Sullivan, Phd
The Problem of Thermal Management - The Data Center: An Ecosystem Under Pressure
Business Continuity and the Data Centre - An exploration of the issues involved in business continuity in the data centre, focusing on the how environmental factors influence the performance of your IT systems
How Continuous Temperature Monitoring Can Help in the Implementation of BRC and CMi Accreditation Standards - A look at how new rules will affect businesses involved in the preparation or storing of fresh food.
An Introduction to Emissivity - An introduction to material emissivity and how it affects measurement using an infrared thermometer or radiation thermometer

Wireless Networks

What is WiFi? An Introduction to Wireless Networks for the Small/Medium Enterprise (SME) - A guide to wireless networks examining the benefits and potential issues of utilizing wireless networks in your organization.
WiFi LAN - Planning and Deploying your Wireless Network - A guide to the planning and deployment of your wireless network.
Open all Hours - Wardriving in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England - An exploration of the security levels of Wireless Networks in and around Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
Why is WPA better than WEP? - An exploration of the reasons why WPA is a more secure bet than WEP in your wireless network
Why is WEP crackable? - An exploration of the security weaknesses of the Wireless Equivalence Protocol (WEP)
WPA versus 802.11i (WPA2) - A discussion of why 802.11i (WPA2) provides stronger wireless security than WiFi Protected Access (WPA) and WEP, why there is a need for a new standard and why you should use it
Analysing Wireless Networks - Wireless networks are everywhere. Odd then that so many users who spend money on Firewalls, Virus protection and the rest then leave their wireless networks wide open to any passing hacker.

Open Source

Open Source Tools in Network Management - An outline of the pros and cons of using open source tools for network management
Why Do People Write Open Source Software? - An examination of who writes open source software and why.

Network Management and Systems Administration

Distributed network monitoring introduction - An introduction to distributed network monitoring with the advantages and disadvantages of distributed monitoring
Alarming & Alerting in Network Management - A roundup of the network manager’s options for the implementation of alarming & alerting solutions for their monitoring applications
An Introduction to Network Simulation - Network simulation is a much underestimated tool in the network manager’s arsenal. When used properly they can help take some of the guesswork out of network planning
An Introduction to Network Mapping - Beyond a certain size networks become difficult to visualize without graphical aids. There are a number of tools to aid in the production of network maps. This article provides reasons why you should be interested in network mapping, as well as an overview of the available tools
An Introduction to Network Configuration Management - An exploration of the reasons why you should be interested in network configuration management. An outline is also presented of the available tools.
Network Management Software and Anti-Virus Software – A Comparison - Whilst the software isn’t comparable the deployment strategies certainly are.
Network Management - On-Demand - Outlines the properties of network management tools you can use whenever you need them and why on-demand network management tools are important.
Network Management Everywhere - How you can have pervasive network management solutions without breaking the bank.
Pervasive Management - How you can install network management tools wherever the need arises AND keep costs down.
A Network Troubleshooting Strategy - A simple strategy for troubleshooting common network problems.
Introduction to Ticket Management - Ticket Management software allows you to log problems, allocate them to engineers and track the progress. Ticket Management tools are essential for the smooth running of all but the smallest networks. Which is the best Ticket Management solution for you?
An Introduction to Network Cable Testing - Network Cable Testing, the physical and electrical testing of Network cabling, is a very specialist area. As a Network Manager you have to deal with cable faults, broken wires, incompatibilities and a host of other cable related issues. What can you do? What do you need to test for?
What causes data loss in Network Cables? - An outline of the causes of data loss in network cables
Test-Um Validator Beats the Standard - Validator is a new kind of network tester that uses advanced digital signal generation to measure the actual noise levels on cable runs. The result is that Validator actually proves that the cable will transmit error free data at the specified rate
Technology Disruption and VoIP - Replacing Five Nines with Three Nines - A discussion of how choosing VoIP may not be the best option for everybody given the unreliability of much IT infrastructure

Network Security

Network Security Attacks - An Introduction - A roundup of the types of network security attacks that any network manager faces out in the wild. It’s a jungle out there, and you need to be mindful of the types of threats you are likely to face.
What Types of Network Security Attacks are Perpetrated? - An investigation into the broad types of network security attacks that network managers need to be aware of.
Who Perpetrates Network Security Attacks? - An exploration of who perpetrates network security attacks and what their motivations are.
Retina® Network Security Scanner - Vulnerability scanners are useful tools for identifying potential vulnerabilities and security breaches and suggesting tips on how to correct any problems found. Retina® is an award winning network scanner developed by California based Eye Digital Security that scans all types of operating systems, hosts, servers, routers and firewalls and reports on more than 1500 vulnerabilities. Retina®, like Nessus, has NMap, the open source vulnerability and network discovery tool, at its core.

General

Are you Ready for IPv6? - A lot has happened in the world of IPv6. This article reviews the features of IPv6, examines the current state of IPv6 world-wide, the impact that it will have on businesses in Europe and most importantly, how its affects the key business decisions that you should be making now
Software Value, What is it and how is it measured? - A discussion of software value and who reaps the benefit.
Software: Your Risk or Mine? - How to avoid taking all the risks when you buy software.
Wireless Security vs Wire Based Security - A discussion of wireless network security and how it differs from a traditional wire based network.
Big Brother - Keeping a Watch on your Network? - A comprehensive introduction to Big Brother
IPSentry - A comprehensive introduction to IPSentry
Intellipool Network Monitor - A comprehensive introduction to Intellipool Network Monitor
Nagios - A comprehensive introduction to the Nagios Network Monitor
Host Monitor - Host Monitor published by KS-soft, is a Windows based shareware system management tool for monitoring server availability and performance 24/7. If a monitored device does not respond to a test using your own parameters, Host Monitor will alert you and/or take any of 25 pre-defined actions such as email message or shutting down a service.
What’s Up Gold - Developed originally from a Freeware utility called WS Watch by John Junod, What’s Up Gold is a relatively inexpensive award-winning and popular network monitoring, mapping, notification and performance tool from Ipswitch
Sending SMS Messages to Landline Phones - Network Managers need to be alerted to problems on the network at all times. But how to achieve this? Sending emails is the most common method used, but what if the user isn’t at their machine, or it’s not switched on? In certain circumstances alarm bells or lights work well. Third party monitoring companies are excellent, give 24/7 coverage but are very expensive. Is there an alternative, cheap, reliable method of receiving alerts?
The ES 201 912 Protocol - A description of the protocol that allows messages to be sent to mobile and landline telephone networks.

Protocol Analysis

Managing Networks with Protocol Analyzers - The different uses of a protocol analyzer and how to go about selecting one.