Chapter 1. Introduction

Network Administration

In the past two decades the number of networked computers in the world has grown at an astonishing rate. In the mid 1980s when the personal computer became the hot new item, most people had no concept of connecting these machines. Today, a mere 20 years later, it is hard to imagine an organization with more than a few computers that does not connect them in some fashion. More often than not, these networks are also connected to the global Internet, allowing connectivity to any other Internet-connected machine anywhere else in the world.

When networking technology was not so widely used, there was little need for network management. There simply wasn’t much to manage. And when things did go wrong, it ...

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