Meet Your SLAs with Network Diagram Software
By Fred Koh - November 19, 2020Ever set out to fix a common household problem like a leaky faucet? How much of that time do you spend actually fixing the problem — and how much of the time do you spend trying to figure out what’s wrong, where exactly the leak is coming from, which part you need, and so on….
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How Network Diagrams & Documentation Overhaul Your Workflow
By Fred Koh - October 28, 2020Over the years on this blog, we’ve often discussed the merits of network diagrams and documentation. We say it again and again, and use different examples to prove it: good network documentation and automated network diagrams save you time, stress, and money. Yeah, yeah…saving money, stress, and time all sounds great on paper, but what…
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No Network Diagrams? You’re Starring in a Psychological Thriller Movie
By Fred Koh - October 26, 2020Do you manage an IT network? You might just be trapped in a psychological thriller movie…. and you’re the star! What am I talking about? Ever watched “Memento”? In that movie, the star suffers from short-term memory loss. He’s on a mission, though, so he has to rely on makeshift reminders such as polaroid photos…
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How Does Network Discovery Help Prevent Cyberattacks?
By Fred Koh - September 30, 2020Over the years, we’ve written extensively about zombie servers, cables that aren’t fully decommissioned, and much more. If we had to sum all that up into just one sentence, it would probably be something like this: IT documentation helps you find resources that are drawing power but not performing any functions. Just as technology and…
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IT Audit? Software Helps
By Fred Koh - September 22, 2020From time to time, when I ask a company why they are looking for network diagram and documentation software such as netTerrain, they say it’s because they just acquired another company and have no idea what’s on their network and what assets the other company has. If you are considering acquiring a company, ask the…
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How Network Diagram Software Helps You Go Home Early
By Fred Koh - September 15, 2020Whether you love Jimmy Buffet or hate him, everyone knows, and probably can relate, to his famous tune, “it’s five o’clock somewhere’ about a worker who’s frustrated with his job and wants it to be five o’clock. What happens, however, when it’s actually five o’clock and you can’t go home?. When people call us in…
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Network Rack Diagrams 101
By Fred Koh - September 14, 2020At Bell Mobility, a new service used to mean another rack. Not just another cabinet. More power bars, fiber cables, and installation work. But what if the space and connections they needed were already there? That was the opportunity Bell Mobility’s infrastructure team uncovered with netTerrain. Instead of automatically expanding, the team could look at…
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Haunted IT Network? When You Can’t Call Ghostbusters
By Fred Koh - September 10, 2020Does your network have servers left running, performing no functions, and just wasting space and power? You may have a zombie server problem. What about network diagrams that are so old and out-of-date they’re cobwebbed over? That’s a lot of dust. Is the network compliant and secure? If not, you’ve got a lot of “Do…
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Network Diagrams Improve Teamwork, Reduce Redundancies
By Fred Koh - August 26, 2020It’s a fact: inefficiencies, collaboration, and time-dependent tasks go hand-in-hand. Different teams and different engineers could end up working on the same issue, unaware the other side is doing the same…and wasting valuable time that could be better spent. Mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) is arrived at by how long it takes to identify a problem and then…
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IT Documentation Best Practices
By Fred Koh - August 11, 2020IT documentation (which is our business’s bread and butter) greatly benefits organizations of all sizes and across all industries. With solid IT documentation, you can: reduce the amount of time to find information decrease troubleshooting time manage capacity wrangle in the assets and inventory of your IT infrastructure Proper and up-to-date documentation gives your IT…
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Need Software for Network Diagrams and Network Mapping?
By Fred Koh - July 14, 2020Recently, I wrote an article (about the three top reasons to replace Visio for network diagrams) which dives into the importance of having an automated solution for network mapping (you can read it by clicking here). So, how do network mapping and network diagrams correlate with each other? According to Wikipedia’s entry on network diagram…
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How to Win Friends & Influence Bosses (Using Network Diagrams)
By Fred Koh - June 15, 2020Finally…you’re about to head home. Then…the calls start. Then..the emails. The network is slow…or even worse, it’s down. Troubleshooting takes up so much time compared to actually fixing the underlying network issue. How can managers and IT directors help their staff reduce the time it takes to find and fix an issue? Network diagrams save…
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