The Types Of Network An engineer Need To Know

Network configuration is an art and demands a lot of time and concentration of network engineers. The conventional network configuration processes would take hours and hours in first making changes to the existing settings and then even more time to find out reasons for any erroneous configuration or malfunction. This scenario applies to internally hosted networks and the managed network service providers both therefore; technology leaders like Cisco, Nor tel, Checkpoint and a large number of other vendors have launched network configuration management software to facilitate the entire network installation, configuration and maintenance operations. Basically there are two types of network configuration software i.e. vendor specific that will only work with the tools & equipment of the corresponding vendor, and the neutral ones that will work with all types of network devices.

One of the network configuration management tools is Rancid by Cisco, which is not an all-in-one tool but still offers some great features that help network engineers to spot the changes with device configurations. Moreover, due to periodic execution of the tool, changes made to the configurations can be emailed to the assigned network engineers. The equipment supported by Rancid includes Cisco routers, Catalyst switches and equipment from HP, Juniper, Alton, Bay Networks, Foundry, Extreme, Force 10 Networks and Red back. Operating systems on which Rancid runs includes Linux & BSD. It does not work on Microsoft Windows.

Alter point is another network configuration management tool primarily constituting of three components: change management tool for a complete audit trail of configuration changes, device updating module and a server that ties these two components centrally. Another powerful network configuration management tool is Manage engine Device Expert that helps with effective remote device configurations across multiple geographic locations, while leveraging the network engineers to take a better control of the network infrastructure. Device Expert is an ideal web–based, multi vendor network configuration, change and compliance management (NCCCM) solution for routers, firewalls, switches and other network devices.

Solar winds a renowned name in the market has launched network management software that is even available for a free trial of 30 days. Enjoy the powerful feature set of a fully functional product to manage your network, servers, applications, storage arrays and virtualized infrastructure. While talking about the network configuration management software how can one miss on the remarkable tool launched by IBM "Tivoli Net cool configuration Manager". This software meets the highest levels of accuracy, standardization and control, while being empowered by the market best brand IBM. Tivoli with its intuitive interface automates the day-to-day network configuration management tasks, enhance network security by controlling access by users, devices and commands, ensure compliance with the defined network policies, and maintain the real-time state of the network.