Tuesday, April 30, 2013

NetworkEducator.com - Networking Articles, Tips, Resources, Configuration

NetworkEducator.com - Networking Articles, Tips, Resources, Configuration

Best practices for Network Infrastructure Management

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 05:30 AM PDT

Managing network infrastructure is a vital part of delivering IT services to the end-users. Networks play a critical part in the service delivery and at the same time as network infrastructure are becoming more complex day by day, it is essential that the processes for the Network Infrastructure exist and function efficiently.

network infrastructureIn this thesis I will create and present processes for Network Infrastructure Management for a company having thousands of users globally spread in unstructured way. The resolution is based on IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Change and Configuration Management best practice guidance. Integral part of this resolution is also to launch a structure to Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which holds the information and relationships of the network infrastructure. Our focus will be on network management support processes .We will not be focusing on the technology to implementing the same.

ITIL and specifically Change and Configuration Management are presented in the thesis for background information. Several other ITIL process areas go beyond the subject but they will be discussed only in brief. We can take ITIL as the basis for creating Network Infrastructure Management processes for the case study corporation, but it will only gives us some approach for the implementation. More specific approach had to be customized as per the company's requirement. When processes are in use the network staff can become an internal provider for network support and development for the end users.

After processes are acknowledged it is easier to educate IT staff for network support and network specialists who can focus more on the improvement side of network management and proactive management rather than just exclusively react on incidents. In other words they will be able to work in pro-active mode instead of reactive mode.

Thesis also discusses the challenges which comes during the implementing the new support processes. Processes describe the required procedures of people executing Network Infrastructure Management. Key problem in implementation new processes in Network Infrastructure Management is the resistance to change from local individual ways of managing the network infrastructure to global.

Author : Antti Mattila
Source : Helsinki University of Technology
 
Download This Paper

The post Best practices for Network Infrastructure Management appeared first on Network Educator.

What is FAQ, RFC & FYI ?

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 03:30 AM PDT

FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. These are periodic postings to Usenet newsgroups that contain a wealth of information related to the topic of the newsgroup. Many FAQs are quite extensive. FAQs are available by subscribing to individual Usenet newsgroups. A Web-based collection of FAQ resources has been collected by The Internet FAQ Consortium and is available at http://www.faqs.org/.

RFC stands for Request for Comments. These are documents created by and distributed to the Internet community to help define the nuts and bolts of the Internet. They contain both technical specifications and general information.

FYI stands for For Your Information. These notes are a subset of RFCs and contain information of interest to new Internet users.

Links to indexes of all three of these information resources are available on the University Libraries Web site at below url.

http://library.albany.edu/reference/faqs.html

The post What is FAQ, RFC & FYI ? appeared first on Network Educator.

Firewall Best Practices

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 02:55 AM PDT

 

  • There should physical security for the firewall.
  • Deny all the traffic and allow only those ports, protocols and services which are required. 
  • Services & software which are not specifically required should be uninstalled or disabled.
  • Limit the number of applications that run on the firewall to let firewall perform at it best. Should avoid using services which can be configured on other dedicated machines instead of firewall. 
  • Syslog Server should be implemented in separate zone (Management zone) so that logs cannot be manipulated by malicious user.
  • Log should be monitored regularly and should be kept for long period. 
  • Alrerting should be configured. 
  • Login Password should be of minimum 8 characters using a combination of alphabets, numeric & special characters such as $  &  # This should be changed frequently. 
  • Access-list should be as much specific as it can be. 
  • Should have backup configuration in soft copy on TFTP Server as well as hard copy. There should be process for restoring the configuration directly from TFTP Server. 
  • Should have the backup of ios files of firewall and and should have process for restoring the ios . 
  • Should create different security zones for additional security. 
  • Instead of configuring telnet for remote management Secure Shell or SSH should be configured. 
  • Different privilege level should be configured for different users for limited access.
  • Should be used stateful inspection should be enabled. 
  • Application proxy should be configured for added security.  
  • Should perform security tests regularly on your firewall to find out loop holes & flaws. These should be done from every interface of the firewall. 

 

The post Firewall Best Practices appeared first on Network Educator.
Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, April 11, 2013

NetworkEducator.com - Networking Articles, Tips, Resources, Configuration

NetworkEducator.com - Networking Articles, Tips, Resources, Configuration

How NMS increases network security and capacity planning

Posted: 11 Apr 2013 03:30 AM PDT

This case study describes how NMS increases network Security and capacity Planning. Cisco IT is using Cisco IOS Net flow technology internally with their Cisco Global network, a leading-edge enterprise environment that is one of the largest and most complex in the world. Cisco customers can draw on Cisco IT’s real world experience in this area to help support [...]

The post How NMS increases network security and capacity planning appeared first on Network Educator.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)