What is network administration?

the software and the network. The factors listed above suggest that the next stage in the development of network and system administration will be the management of programs and quality of service, which will not depend on the networks or computing platforms used.

The development of the concept of administration concerns not only the architecture of systems. Problems that have arisen in distributed environments have led to the fact that network management has come to be seen as the main task of system administrators. However, this situation changed when the number of distributed applications and databases operating in a network began to exceed the established value. This led to the strengthening of the role of system administration, initiating the process of integrating the two types of management - system and network management. An integrated network management system is a management that provides a consolidation of functions that are related to the analysis, management, and diagnostics of the network. Thus, the change in network administration tools and systems is directly related to the improvement of modern information technology.

This is a specialist whose area of responsibility includes the normal operation and rational use of the resources of an automated system and computer networks. The administration of information systems includes:

• installation and subsequent configuration of the LAN;
• Maintaining its consistent performance;
• installing basic software;
• monitoring networks.

Based on the above objectives, the network administrator must perform the following functions:

• system planning;
• installation of software products;
• installation and proper configuration of network devices;
• installation of networks;
• data archiving;
• management of user access rights;
• maintaining information security of the network;

Special preventive measures and procedures are of great importance to ensure the health of networks. Also, the administrator must satisfy the authorized user requests. To effectively perform all these tasks, especially in corporate LANs, it is quite difficult, and in some cases impossible, for one person. Therefore, the success of the administration of particularly complex computer networks is possible only under the condition of using modern tools automating management processes.

An automated information system (AIS) is a set of hardware and software used to store and manage information, as well as to perform certain calculations. Therefore, an AIS becomes a component of almost every administrative mechanism of a network service and, at the same time, a management platform. A set of applications designed to manage the network and the other systems that make it up is called a network management platform. The purpose of a network service is to use the service provided and to provide a link between the processes occurring in the various subscriber systems.

Specialists believe that it is most appropriate to manage the network from a single workplace. The need to control network devices using a single PC has contributed to the development of different architectures of platforms and software for administration. The most common among them was the distributed two-tier "manager-agents" architecture. The manager application runs using a control console, interacting continuously with modules (agents) running in various network devices. The agents are responsible for collecting information about the functioning parameters of the resources, as well as for making certain changes in the configuration at the manager's request, and providing him with various administrative information. At the same time, despite its convenience, the use of this scheme causes an increase in the volume of service traffic, and hence a decrease in the bandwidth required for the operation of applications.

In order to at least partially solve the bandwidth problem, a three-tiered scheme is used, whereby a portion of the management functions is delegated to the most important nodes in the network. The managers installed in them, through their network of agents, can control the work of the devices, while acting as agents in relation to the main manager program, which runs on the management PC. As a result, most of the service traffic is localized in separate network segments, because local managers and the administrative console work only when needed.

The key idea behind the improvement of network administration technology is to minimize the role of humans in this process, which involves the creation of software that optimally meets all the challenges of administering network infrastructure. This approach makes the process of administering computer networks much easier, because setting up a single application is much easier and faster than setting up the entire computer network and its associated programs