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Something happened to my
network yesterday. My router updated its firmware, and everything changed. And
while unexpected, it was doing what it supposed to do and something that I
thought until now was a Good Thing. Welcome to self-updating networks, and
welcome to a new era in keeping up with your routers.
My router (a SofaWare SOHO
product on my test lab's network) is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg
with this trend. There are new Catalyst switches from Cisco that will
self-update to the latest firmware when a new switch is inserted in the stack.
Other vendors have also jumped on this feature too.
When I first heard about this
self-updating feature I was favorably inclined. What could be bad, especially
for those network administrators who don't have the time to keep their routers
and other core networking gear up to date with the latest patches and fixes?
But this feeling was short-lived, especially after I got lost in the
configuration menus of my router after it had been auto-updated. Mind you, the
Sofaware product is a very easy-to-use router, but the new version of firmware
had moved some stuff around just enough to throw me off. Then I realized the trouble
that I was in. This isn't a trend that brings all goodness to our lives.
Auto updates aren't always
the best thing for you because you can't keep up with the changes. When you
start making changes to a smoothly running network, the more that changes the
more difficult it is for an administrator to troubleshoot and fix something
that breaks. And these automatic changes make it more difficult to document
your network during the times of plenty and when everything is working.
You do document your network
topology, don’t you? As I used to say when I was a teacher, let me see
those hands. Hmm, not as many as I would like.
Network documentation is
quickly becoming a lost art. To do it right requires a great deal of discipline
and a great deal of time and money. Many of us just can't afford it right now
in these times of doing without. But it is during just these times that we need
it most.
My friend Bill Alderson at
Pine Mountain Group (www.pmg.com) does
network documentation for a living (among other things) and he showed me the
jumbo-sized drawings and piles of paper that a typical job entails when I
caught up with him last month at Interop. If you do your documentation right,
you find out all sorts of stuff about your network that you probably need to
know. Such as which of your routers are mis-configured. Or WAN links that carry
print server traffic. Or VPNs that lead to nowhere. All of this is a way to
save money, save bandwidth, and preserve uptime. Only it isn't all that sexy,
and isn't something that a CIO can take to the bank with a three-month ROI. And
that makes for a tough sell these days.
But the flip side of documenting your network is also maintaining the documents and keeping them up to date with the proper change control procedures. Alderson tells the story of a client who was suitably impressed with all the piles of documentation delivered to his doorstep. (He is a natural storyteller, by the way. If you ever get a chance to catch one of his seminars, do take the time to go. You will come away not only entertained and informed but learning something about networks that you didn't know beforehand.) The client was so happy with all these plus-sized drawings and work that he immediately called his network support team to implement the suggested fixes. This made his documents outdated before the sun had set on them. What this client forgot was how to implement an appropriate change control procedure, and how to keep his precious documents current and contemporaneous with his changes.
Well, I started out talking
about self-updating networks. And then have a morality lesson on documentation.
Sorry about that. But proceed with caution in the former, and make sure you at
least attempt in the next month to start on the latter.
Entire contents
copyright 2003 by David Strom, Inc.
David Strom,
dstrom@cmp.com, +1 (516) 562-7151
Port Washington
NY 11050
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