Network AdministrationI have worked as a computer network administrator for over 5 years. I worked primarily with networks in a mixed Microsoft Windows NT and Novell Netware environment. I am a Novell Certified Novell Engineer (CNE) and a Certified Novell GroupWise Administrator. I took Cisco router configuration classes. In this essay, I will discuss the definition of a network administrator, the duties and responsibilities of a network administrator and share a day in the life of a network administrator. For documentation of my credentials, I include my certification certificates. What is a network administrator? A network administrator is one who maintains and troubleshoots your computer systems. Depending on the size of your organization and the complexity of your technology, a network administrator's job can vary from ten hours per week to full-time. There are obvious network administration tasks, such as installing or upgrading system software and managing user accounts and disk space. So you probably have an idea of ​​what an administrator does. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is a consortium of telecommunications companies from around the world that have, among other things, defined a series of recommendations describing how a telecommunications management network (TMN) should be operated. ITU members have adopted a management functions model that I think is of interest to us because it provides a framework that we can use to understand the role of the network administrator. This function model is often called the FCAPS model after the initials of each of the main functions it describes. TMN function Naive description Fault management: fix what is broken. Configuration management: controlling the operational parameters of something so that it works the way you want. Accounting management: Know who uses how much of what, and perhaps bill them. Performance management: making sure everything is working acceptably and quickly. Security management: control who can do what. The idea is that almost all network management tasks can be considered to belong to one of these management functions. For example, replugging a patch after it has fallen is fault management, introducing a firewall to your network is security management...... middle of paper ...... the post workstation can be brought back into service elsewhere, the administrator could optionally format the disks (thus erasing all previous data) and reassign the workstation to a less demanding position than the previous one. I have found that installing new workstations not only makes the end user more productive, but generally the task of administering the workstation is easier due to improved technology, it that is to say. newer operating system. Some administrators have found it useful to use a procedure called "ghosting" to speed up the process of setting up multiple new desktops. During this process, a workstation is configured with general settings sufficient for most users. Special software is used to “copy” an image of this configuration. When one or more new workstations need to be configured, the image is then copied to the hard drive. For this procedure to work, the workstation must have the same or very similar hardware as the original workstation from which the image was copied. Otherwise there will be multiple errors and the administrator will spend more time fixing the errors than he..