Before hiring a consultant or making internal decisions concerning technology, it’s important to understand and document your network environment. Doing so will help eliminate frustration and save money. So, when beginning this evaluation, there are some things to take into consideration: control, location, equipment, and software.

Working with networks is all about control. It’s important to know who has rights to access certain files and who doesn’t. There are three types of users, all with different rights: administrators, power users, and general users. Administrators have access to everything but no one should use this as their normal login, to eliminate the risk of possible hacks or accidental deletion of files. Power users have access to most network areas and can install programs. General users can install some programs and have limited access to files.

When setting up a network environment, decide if server is going to be used or a peer-to-peer network. Peer-to-peer is sharing files from one computer to another and a server has all the files stored on it and every computer can access them.

When talking about location there are two ways to look at it, logical and physical. When mapping out a network, the logical location is how it pans out; the Internet goes into the router, the server is connected to the router, the server is connected to a switch that connects the rest of the computers. The physical location is where the equipment is; the server is in the bill’s office under the desk.

Remember when making the network map that every piece of equipment connected to the network needs to be in its correct place on the logical map. The same goes for the physical map, report where all the printers in the office are. It is crucial to have a list of all the system information. System information consists of firewalls, passwords, warranty dates, changes to any system. Having this info in conjunction with the network maps will make the time a consultant has to work on a network decrease immensely. This decrease in time will in turn decrease the cost to have a consultant configure your network. Knowing the network environment will help when anything breaks down or goes hay wire and will inevitably save money in the end.