Previous Table of Contents Next


Section IX
Network Operations and Management

The ability of employees and customers to communicate in an efficient and effective manner is highly dependent upon the ability to control the operation of your network. Recognizing this fact of life resulted in the inclusion of this section in this handbook focused on network operations and management. This focus is in the form of nine chapters oriented towards topics which provide us with detailed information concerning different aspects of network operations and management issues.

The first chapter in this section, “How to Work with a Consultant,” recognizes the fact that most organizations at one time or another will have to supplement existing employee skills through the use of one or more consultants. This chapter acquaints us with the advantages associated with the use of consultants and methods to consider to effectively use their serves.

The second chapter in this section, “Open Systems Integration: Issues in Design and Implementation,” provides us with “seven rules of integration” that can be used to successfully design and implement a client-server project in an open system integration environment. Based upon the experiences of a project manager at a leading financial organization in integrating legacy systems into a new open system environment, this chapter introduces us to the major factors that are applicable to system integration projects and their effect upon the replacement of a legacy system with an open system. Once this is accomplished, this chapter presents its seven rules of integration that when followed facilitates the success of a well-thought-out conversion to an open system.

Standards can be considered as the glue which binds the capability to interoperate. In the third chapter in this section, “Operating Standards and Practices for LANs,” we first become acquainted for the rationale behind the need for LAN standards. Once this is accomplished, we will examine LAN support issues and the role of standards committees in defining mission-critical operations used for writing an operations and security standards document.

One of the newest security concerns of managers are applets, network-based programs that run on client systems. The fourth chapter in this section, “Applets and Network Security: A Management Overview,” describes how applets operate, the threats they present, and the security precautions network managers and LAN administrators should consider to minimize the security exposures presented by applets.

One of the problems associated with modern technology is the fact that it provides the facilities for unscrupulous persons to create programs that can be harmful to computers. In the fifth chapter in this section, “Assessing and Eliminating Virus Threats in Distributed Networks,” we focus our attention upon the virus threat. This chapter provides us with information on how viruses infect systems to include a description of the major types of viruses. Once this is accomplished, we turn our attention to methods by which viruses can be spread through an organization, techniques we can use to discover the presence of a virus, and ways to prevent infection, or if infection occurs, how to recover from this situation.

Turning our attention to the wide area network, the sixth chapter in this section covers the WAN conversion process. In “Technology Conversions on WANs” we examine one of the most difficult projects in networking. In this chapter we look at the techniques we can use to facilitate the WAN conversion process to include methods we can use to audit the physical network and migration strategies that can be used to deploy new network equipment with as little downtime as possible.

Due to the significant importance of electronic messaging, the seventh chapter in this section covers the management aspects of this topic. In “Enterprise Messaging Management” we turn our attention to the implementation of client/server messaging management. After reviewing the problems associated with enterprise messaging, we look at email standards and message management concepts. In doing so, we will review the architecture for messaging management and the role of control center console software.

No section on network operations and management would be complete without coverage of Windows NT and the global naming tree, the topics of the eighth and ninth chapters in this section. In the eighth chapter, entitled “Windows NT Performance Monitoring,” we will examine the use of NT’s built-in utility program which provides us with the capability to note the effect of various hardware and software components upon network and server performance. In concluding this section we will look at an often-overlooked and hidden-from-view characteristic of network management. In the chapter “Managing Networks with the Global Naming Tree” we will become acquainted with the ISO’s tree structure which assigns unique identifiers to different types of objects. By understanding the numeric structure of the global naming tree, we obtain the ability to use network management more effectively as it allows us to select options and identifiers as they are developed instead of having to wait for the upgrade of a new graphic user interface.


Previous Table of Contents Next

Copyright © CRC Press LLC