Network Documentation

Print Protocols

Network Documentation — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:41:01 +0000

You are reading Print Protocols from Network Documentation.

If you use Network Printing devices you have to check wath protocols you need to access that printer.

Network Protocols

Standard Network protocols on HP Printdevices are:

TCP/IP
IPX/SPX
DLC/LCC
AplleTalk

Use only the ones that your really need!
If you run a TCP/IPBased network without Apple Computers or Novell Clients just set the TCP/IP Stack.

Disbale all the others so they don’t send all kinds of network packets over your network.
Always try to keep your network as clean as possible..

Basic TCP/IP Configuration for HP Printers

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HP Web Jetadmin Printer management Software

Network Documentation — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:39:27 +0000

You are reading HP Web Jetadmin Printer management Software from Network Documentation.

If you want to get a good overview of the Printers installed on you network, you really want this Free Software from Hewlett Packard.

Not only does it give you a great overview of all your printdevices, but you can also see several other things.

For Instance:

How many pages are printed on that printer
How full are the toner catridges at the moment
Is there new Firmware to install
What is the serial number of the device

One other great thing you can do, is to upgrade your printer firmware from Hewlett Packard right within this Tool!
Just check the latest version to the installed one, and upgrade…. multiple printers at a time if you want to.

Get here The HP Web Jetadmin Software

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Network Monitoring Guidelines

Network Documentation — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:36:16 +0000

You are reading Network Monitoring Guidelines from Network Documentation.

If you build a Network Monitoring system you will find out that there is a lot of information that you can get via the SNMP Protocol.

You have to make some choices on what you want to monitor and when you want to receive a notification about a certain event and how you want to receive it.

Start by making a basic monitoring plan, think about what you want to see:

For example:

Disc space usage on Servers, SAN or NAS devices
CPU usage on your most critical servers like Print, SQL and Mail Servers
Mail Que’s fon Incoming and Outgoing Traffic
Intranet of Internet Webservers traffic and bandwith use
Routers Bandwith Usage and Traffic
Ping you most critical devices
Etc..

For all those items you write down the monitoring interval and thresholds and you gets a notification.
There is no point in sending a ping failure about a print server to the SQL Support person..

Only if you have written this plan down you can start building your system.

You can find a lot more information on Network Monitoring Software

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Basic Network Monitoring Tools

Network Documentation — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:34:14 +0000

You are reading Basic Network Monitoring Tools from Network Documentation.

There are several tools with which you can monitor your network.

First, what has Network Documentation to do with Network Monitoring?

More then you might think! Because you need to now the ins- and outs of your network you look at your doumentation to find out what critical devices you got.
Depending on that information you can start building a monitoring system.

Here are several tools that you will find very usefull:
Use the software embedded in your managed switch from HP,Cisco, 3Com and Nortel, that will provide you with information to troubleshoot a slow network.

Linux Based Monitoring Systems

Nagios
Cacti

Windows Based Monitoring Systems

Nino
MRTG
Paessler Commercial, but very good value for money and easy setup

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NetworkDNA Structure

Network Documentation — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:04:59 +0000

You are reading NetworkDNA Structure from Network Documentation.

The basic structure of the NetworkDNA System is as follows:

Section 1 – Non Network Information
Section 2 – Network Globals
Section 3 – Network Infrastucture
Section 4 – Network Devices
Section 5 – Peripherals
Section 6 – Software
Section 7 – Administrative
Section 8 – Service Level Agreemets SLA
Section 9 – Diagrams

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Network Documentation Blog and RSS Update Feed

Network Documentation — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:55:41 +0000

You are reading Network Documentation Blog and RSS Update Feed from Network Documentation.

This Blog is about Network Documentation and Network Management Information.
It Originated from my Dutch website http://www.netwerkdna.nl/ where I Inform Dutch IT Managers and alike about how to set up and maintain Computer Networks.

The Site is based on the Methodoligy NetworkDNA from Don Krause.
But over time it expanded to more than just Network Documentation, cover all kinds off aspects involved Computer Networks, Administration, Security, Management and Monitoring, just to name a few.
More and More I was convinced that I should give it to You as well.
And by You I mean You the IT Manager, IT Support Technician in the Small to Medium Business.

Because that is where I Work, and that is where I need and work with the Information, Tools and Procedures I will tell you about.

So keep a lookout on this website, or subscribe to the RSS Feed to get automatic update information, even via email… here is the address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NetworkDocumentationInformation

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Network Printing – Basics Principles for a Stable Printing Enviroment

Network Documentation — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:31:17 +0000

You are reading Network Printing – Basics Principles for a Stable Printing Enviroment from Network Documentation.

I like Hewlett Packard for their whole range of products including their network printers.

Now a days it is almost difficult to get a printer that is NOT network ready… but for a nice stable network without to much collisions and traffic towards those network printers there are some features that you might want to close down on those printers.

Hewlett Packard and other manufactures support several protocols on their network interface. To reduce traffic you can close down all that you don’t need for you network.

The TCP/IP protocoll is the most widely used for all kin of networks so you will keep that running.

If you are not running an Novell or Apple based network you can disable their respective protocols IPX/SPC and Appletalk.

Have your printers installed on a separate print-server with a enough free disk space to make sure the processing of the print job will not be hindered. if you need to you can assign the spool directory to a differen disk than the default c: drive on the server.

Name you printers so you can recognized them, but keep the names short and without blanks for installation purposes. You can give more information about the location of the printer in the seperate comments field on the server where you installed the printer and its driver.

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NetworkDNA Basic Structure

Network Documentation — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:41:55 +0000

You are reading NetworkDNA Basic Structure from Network Documentation.

The basic structure for your Network Documentation is as follows:

Section 1 – Non Network Information
Section 2 – Network Globals
Section 3 – Network Infrastructure
Section 4 – Network Devices
Section 5 – Peripherals
Section 6 – Software
Section 7 – Administrative
Section 8 – Service Level Agreements SLA
Section 9 – Diagrams

Each of these objects will be reflected in the page’s that you can select from the top menu. You need to have this data lined-up before we can start managing and monitoring your network.

What is just as important as knowing how you computer network is structured and documentated is the fact that you need to monitor your network. You should have system in place that looks at critical factors on your network and warn you before things go wrong.

So I am going to give you more information on this site on how to get those monitoring tools in place and how you can do that on a budget. I know that you don’t have honderds of thousands dollars to spent. You might not even have tens of thousands to spend… so we will look for affordable and open source network monitoring tools.

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The Network Documentation Process

Network Documentation — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:09:09 +0000

You are reading The Network Documentation Process from Network Documentation.

The Network Documentation Process always starts with an inventory of your assets.

That means you have to identify every piece of hardware that builds and connects to your network. To do that you want to use a tool that will ping and list all the IP addresses in your network and possibly give more information like the name and operating system of that device.

You will find out that there are a lot of tools to do this, but my favorite one to start with is Look At Lan (there is also Fing from the same developer, but I prefer LookAtLan).

It is a simple tool but it will provide you with a great overview of your network. Because it only sees the devices that are really active on you network at that moment you will need to run it again once more users are online and their computers are active, but to find out about your infrastructure it is a good start.

Most of the devices that connect to your network and make your network will be active at each scan:

Routers
Switches
Servers
Printers

They are the ones with static addresses or for printers they could be in a separate DHCP TCP IP Pool.

Make a note of that IP Addresses and start from there to build your network documentation.

I start with an Excel Spreadsheet and Document every IP Adress, Device Host-Name, Location “Serverroom A, PatchCabinet Rackmounted in Position 3″ and a Description like “Cisco Catalyst Switch 3524 XL”.

Of course you have the label the devices with there Host-name for faster troubleshooting.

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Network Monitoring Basics

Network Documentation — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:02:24 +0000

You are reading Network Monitoring Basics from Network Documentation.

Monitoring a computer network requires thinking and planning before implemanting a monitoring system.

Think about what to monitor

You could start monitoring every aspect of your network, but does that make sense? Do you really need to know if a printer is up every minute? Or is a check one an hour enough. Is checking the CPU load on you main server once a day enough or do you want to keep that und a close watch?

Or do you want to know the status of every workstation on your network? I don’t!

You need to make a chart with the most critical elements of your network before you can define the probes that you need to check.

Placing a Time Trigger

Along with the definition of the item you want to track you should write down how frequent this check need to be done.

As I mentioned earlier, you might want to check you main server CPU load. Now that is something that can be triggered every minute or every five minutes so you can get a better view and insight of the load that this server has to endure during normal working hours. Getting such insight will prevent you (as an example) from going on a wild chase if someone reports a server response slowdown at 9,00 o’clock in the morning. You already now from an earlier investigation that at that time a SQL Import is done by the Controlling department to update their credit control program. That previous investigation was done after your saw that peak reoccurring every day at the same time.

Checking your Reports

In the example give before you noticed the CPU load on the same time every day and you could find what was causing this event.

Finding those anomalies is of course only possible if you read the reports and check the screens on a regular base. Make sure you do this at least once a week to see changes and issues before your users do so you can investigate and solve any problems before your users come knocking o your door.

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