Nifty Little Toolkit

I am ALWAYS looking for tools. I love them. Little things that make things easier. So, what better place to keep them than a blog post where I can routinely edit, add to , and share with the world?

Hardware

• RackSolutions: Need help finding the perfect rack for your equipment? This is a good place to start.

Software

• PortQuiz.net: Ever find yourself inside an organization and were not sure if they were blocking a particular port? What about your own ISP? This nifty little site has all their ports open. Simply follow their instructions and you can test to see if a particular port is being blocked locally. Cool stuff.
• DownDetector.com: Want to know if a particular website is down? Check out this site. They track a lot of different sites. Unfortunately, they do not track my own but hey, not everybody is perfect. Or maybe, my site is always up so there's no reason to track mine? Regardless, it can be useful when you are trying to figure out some of your Internet issues you may be facing.
• Ultimate Boot CD: Do your work on computers? If so, there is often a need to boot to something else in order to look at the hardware in an unbiased way and/or take a look at the data on the hard disk safely. UBCD is a great tool for this. It allows you to work on a computer separate of the OS that is already loaded. Very handy.
  WayBack Machine: Wish there was an archive of the Internet; a way to look at how web sites looked in the past? There is! The WayBack Machine! Pretty cool tool.
• Social Media:
• HootSuite: This is a great site for managing multiple platforms. You can schedule posts which is nice, especially when you are trying to plan things out in advance.
• Klout: Another nice site for posting across social media platforms AND it gives you a social media index score to give you an idea of how influential you are.
• Buffer: Another site for posting and scheduling posts across various social media platforms.
• Hastagify: Looking for the perfect hashtag? This is the site for your. Insert a search term and it will give you various hashtags associated with it.
• Have I been Pwned? Great site for finding out if your personal information has been compromised. Interesting fellow (Troy Hunt) created this out of some research he was doing and we are the lucky benefactors. Check it out!
• troyhunt@hotmail.com
• https://plus.google.com/+TroyHunt/posts
• https://twitter.com/troyhunt
• https://www.facebook.com/troyahunt
• SpeedTest. How fast is your Internet connection? Stop taking your service's declared speed as fact. Stop taking their technical support's word for it. Check out SpeedTest which will test both your upload and download speed.
• Network Management Tools
• SpiceWorks
• OpenNMS
• Hacking:
• Kali Linux: If you are interested in ethical hacking, penetration testing, etc., this is where you need to start. Great bootable disc that comes with all kinds of tools for testing an organization's defenses.
• Cybrary: This is a great little site. They provide quite a bit of technical training FOR FREE! Of what I have gone through so far, it is fairly well done (better than my stuff) and fairly high level meaning it should be easy for most people to digest as it is not overly technical. But, it is a GREAT way to get exposed to a lot of technical topics. Great job guys!
• Hack This Site: Develop your ethical hacking skills. This is a great site to learn about hacking. They have progressively more difficult projects as well as discussion boards where you can discuss hacking. Of course, you should only do this in an ethical manner to better learn how to defend your systems.
• Hacking Tutorial Tips & Tricks: Tips and tricks to learn about hacking. Please use responsibly.
• EvilZone Hacking: Discussion board where you can read and learn about hacking from hackers.
• AnyWho: 
• Yansi: 
• Metasploit. Want to learn about penetration testing? Metasploit is a professional pen testing tool. There is also a "limited features" version that is free, where you can start to develop some of your skills.
• MX ToolBox. Test your or someone else's DNS or SMTP servers. This tool can help you determine if you have been placed on a blacklist, have DNS errors, as well as other problems.
• External IP Addresses. Need to determine your external IP address? These tools can help with that.
• What is My IP
• IP Chicken
• Tor: The Onion Router. Want anonymity? Give this browser a shot. Be sure to read about. You can be virtually invisible on the Internet.
• PC Part Picker. Want to build your own system? A little unsure about all the components you might need? Let this site help you make sure you have accounted for everything you need.
• CSS Validator. Want to know if you CSS is valid and follows all the appropriate rules? This is the site for you. It shows you any problems you have and helps you correct them.
• XHTML Validator. Want to validate your XHTML? This is the site for you. Much like the CSS Validator, this site well help you improve your XHTML.

Have others to add to the list? Share. I would love to build this thing out into something really useful

Wireless Design

As part of my networking classes, I spend some time on Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Wireless has become such a central point in networking, that it has to, in my ever so humble opinion, be addressed separately to make sure it garners the attention it deserves. There are just too many subtleties that can come back to bite you if you are not careful.

While there are lots of different aspects to WLANs such as security, different standards, etc, one area that I think can be very beneficial to students is understanding how radio signals propagate and how objects interfere with those radio signals, and how to plan for the proper resource allocation of Wireless Access Points (WAPs).

But how do you decide where to place devices? You can "guestimate" or simply place your WAP wherever is convenient but unless you are working in a small space, you are likely to have dead spots. You can try the traditional approach which is often completed by doing a site survey. This is where you go and physically visit a proposed site. You temporarily place a WAP and walk around with a signal strength reader or laptop, recording the signal strength in various locations. You then move the WAP to a new location and repeat the process until you feel like you have found the ideal location for the WAP to give you the best coverage. This approach does work. But, it can be tedious and is an after the fact solution. As you can imagine, this can be time consuming and an expensive endeavor, ranging from $2500-$10,000 per building or more depending on the size of the building, the number of locations, and various other factors.

For an arguably better approach, you can actually determine the number of WAPs and their approximate location BEFORE you go to the trouble of purchasing and setting up all of your equipment by completing a Predictive Site Survey. While I am sure there are several ways to do this, the tool that I am familiar with is a tool provided by a company named Aerohive. Aerohive is a manufacturer of commercial Wireless Access Points and pushes for web based management of those WAPs. Pretty cool stuff. But, they also have what they call, a WiFi Planner tool. This tool allows you to enter the address of your facility using Google Maps and then draw your floor plan directly on their web page or to upload a PNG of your floor plan and then, based on the walls and wireless standard, it can automatically determine the number and location your WAPs need to be located on the plan, providing a heat map to illustrate coverage. Is that cool or what? You can also manually place WAPs and see the effect that it has on your coverage as well.

So, how do you use this? Well, you can register for a trial account for free at: https://www.aerohive.com/planner/.

If you select Try HiveManager NG, it will take you to the bottom of the page where you can register. Once registered and you have confirmed your account through the email they send you, return to https://www.aerohive.com/planner/ to login with the account information that you setup. 

Once you do that, you will be presented with their dashboard. Impressive isn't it? Remember, this is a dashboard for managing your wireless network through the cloud. If this were a live network, you could keep an eye on your various WAPs, their performance, clients, etc. Again, very cool stuff. But, we are only interested in their planner tool, so select Plan in the navigation bar at the top.

That will bring you to this page. Cool huh? From here, you can do a few things. You can import your own map. Say you have a few facilities across the metroplex already saved to a Google Map. You could import that map here. But, for our purposes, let's click Add Location.

Add Location brings up the dialog box we have below. You've got several different options to choose from. First, you need to create a Location, followed by creating a Building followed by creating a Floor. Type in whatever you want; I used Schuessler Sounds, Service, and 1st Floor respectively for each name. You can also type in your specific address or simply type in your city and state and click Save for each one.

With that done, select the name you gave for the floor you are working on in the navigation bar on the left. For me again, the name I gave it was 1st Floor. Once you select it, your screen should look similar to the one below.

Now you are ready to upload your floor plan. Click on Upload Floor Plan to see the dialog box below.

Click on Upload New From Computer to open the file upload dialog box below.

Click Choose and then navigate to wherever you save your Visio image of your floor plan. Note: you must save your Visio floor plan as a PNG file to upload it here.

Once you have selected the image file of your floor plan, click Upload and you will be presented with the dialog box below.

This basically wants to know how much of the image is your building versus how much is "extra". You can actually tweak the scale later so I recommend simply expanding the selection bars all the way to the corners to capture the entire image. Once you do, click Save All. Once I did that, I was presented with the following screen.

First click on Size the Plan and then select the Size Manually Check Box. Once you do, you should see something similar to the dialog box below. Notice the oval around the two red plus marks. This is how you are going to add scale to your drawing so that Aerohive knows how long your various walls are.

On my drawing, I drug the left red plus mark down so it was below the dialog box. Then, I drug the right red plus mark to the right wall. I then entered the distance between those two red plus marks to add scale to the drawing. In my case, that distance was 53 feet (I rounded up). Then click Apply to set the scale.

Now, you are pretty much done. The only thing left to do is actually generate the heat male. Do this by clicking on Plan Devices on the navigation bar at the top.

In the Auto Plan For group, select the More drop down box to select things like 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz, Channel Width, Device Type, Signal Strength, and/or Power. Keep in mind, this is for Aerohive products. But, this is still very useful. I would focus on the device Type and the specific standard you are looking to implement. In my case, I selected a device that said it was compliant with 802.11ac and then I clicked Auto Place. Just for giggles, play around with the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz ranges. How does this affect your coverage? How does it affect your speed? Neither choice is "right". It just depends on what you are trying to do. If you want to restrict your devices to the 802.11ac standard to get the benefit of speed, recognize that by operating at 5 GHz, you will not get the same range that you would get if your were operating at 2.4 GHz and thus, might need more WAPs for adequate coverage.

With that done, you end up with this:

Stunning, isn't it? OK, well, not really. It does at least indicate the approximate location in the building that the WAP should be located. It also tells me that I only need one WAP. That's cool to know isn't it? But, what else can I get out of this?

Well, click on View Heat Map in the navigation bar at the top. Just below the navigation bar, there are also several options. In the Show On Heatmap group, click RSSI.

MUCH cooler, eh? Now, you can play around a bit. Select the 2.4 GHz range under Radio to see how your heatmap changes. Does this make you want to reconsider changing wireless standards? Will you only allow 2.4 or 5 GHz devices? These are some of the decisions you will have to make.

Now, the above example is for illustration purposes only. In this floor plan, there is one crucial aspect missing: internal walls. Internal walls will have a huge effect on how the radio wave propagate throughout the building. You should not see concentric circle propagating around the WAP as you do in the above image. Rather, you should see concentric circle up until the radio signal impact a surface such as a wall. If Aerohive does not detect the walls in your diagram, you can go back and manually add them. Be sure to specify the materials they are made of as this will impact the signal propagation as well. The more accurate your floor plan, the more accurate your heatmap is going to be.

Ideally, you would start with this approach and then go back to do a modified site survey, where you are simply confirming successful wireless coverage in your building.

Hopefully you found this useful. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to let me know.

Using Oracle's Virtual Box to Explore OSs and Networking

So, I teach several networking and networking related class. From undergraduate Data Communications to graduate Networking for Managers and Windows/Linux server classes. Quite frankly, they're the coolest classes. Since many of these are online classes, I tried to find a way to automate as much as I could and minimize my personal investment of time/effort all while still trying to make sure students have a great, interactive, and engaging experience. I feel like I have had success in that to a large degree due to my use of TestOut. It does a nice job of providing additional materials, notes, and the opportunity to certify for several of their courses. But, best of all is that it has simulations which help students get their hands dirty.

But, what about those that actually want to get their hand dirty and play around with a live system? Technology has come a long way and there are lots of options but many involve a lot of cost and/or time commitment, both of which I always seem to be short of. But virtualization software on the desktop holds a lot of promise, especially since our students have access to lots of free Microsoft software through DreamSpark. So, with that in mind, this is a brief tutorial over how to go about setting up virtualization software and then loading an operating system (OS) to play around with.

Before getting started, if you happen to be one of my students, review section 5.9 of our TestOut Networking Pro class. They give a nice overview of virtualization. Now, there are several choices when it comes to virtualization software. As part of the DreamSpark subscription, students can download and install Microsoft Virtual PC for free. This works ok for Microsoft products but really seems to struggle with Linux flavors. Personally, I love Oracle's Virtual Box. While you can read more about them on their site, you can see from the screen shot that they support several different host OSs. Me personally, I tend to operate in the Windows world, so I am selecting VirtualBox for Windows Hosts. I should note here, that when I say host, I am referring to the physical machine and its OS. It is said to be hosting the virtual machines. So, be aware of the terminology. You should also note their advisory stating that at the time of this writing, Windows 10 is not currently supported. You may be able to get it to work with one of the test builds but be aware that you may run into problems. Just for reference, I am installing this on a Windows 7 host.

Virtual Box Download Page

So, once I click on the x86/amd64  link to download VirtualBox, I am promoted for where I want to download the installation package (VirtualBox-5.0.2-102096-Win.exe - this name will change as the package is updated). I will simply save it to my default downloads folder. Once the download is complete I run the installation package. When I do so, I am presented with the Setup dialog box. Simply click 'Next' to proceed.

At this point, you will be asked about any Custom Setup features that you want. If necessary, you can select and alternative location to install Virtual Box by selecting the Browse button. I would simply click next to proceed.

The next Custom Setup dialog box allows you to configure the setup program to automatically create a Virtual Box shortcut on the desktop, to put a shortcut in your Quick Launch bar, and to Register file associations. Again, I would simply go with the default options set here.

Because the virtualization software interacts with your host OS and its hardware, installing it is temporarily going to interupt your network adapter so that both your host and virtual machines will be able to access the network. Don't be alarmed. Simply click 'Yes'.

Now, you are actually ready for the installation to occur. Click 'Install'

Now it is time to wait. This may take a few minutes.

At this point, you may be presented with one or more dialog boxes resembling the one you see below. I ended up seeing it three times as Virtual Box was installing various drivers.

At this point, you are pretty much done setting up Virtual Box. Click 'Finish' and let's go ahead and jump into installing our first OS.

As you can see here, I already have a couple of Virtual Machines (VMs) loaded on this machine. But, to walk you through the process of creating your own VM like you might if you downloaded the ISO from DreamSpark, I will setup another VM temporarily. Click on 'New' to begin the process.

You can name the VM anything you want. I recommend that you make the name descriptive as as you add machines, it can start to become confusing. Since I am going to install Windows Server 2008, I have entered that in the 'Name' field. Note, I am only installing 2008 for demonstration purposes. I happen to have an ISO handy that I am using for this demonstration. But, your installation of whatever you decide to install will proceed similarly. Once names, select the 'Type' of OS. They give you several options including Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. Lastly, select the 'Version'. If you select the incorrect one, you will simply get an error. Start over and correct your selection. Once you have made all of your selections, click 'Next'

Next, you need to allocate RAM to the VM. Clearly, you are limited by how much physical RAM the host machine has. But, keep in mind that the host machine has to also continue to function while running the VM. Ideally, you have LOTS of RAM. I am sitting at 4 gig here which is pretty small by today's standards. I would like to give it more RAM but since this is just a demonstation, I will simply accept the default of 512 MB. Refer to the recommended RAM requirements for your OS you are installing as a VM.

Now, you need to make a decision about your virtual 'Hard disk'. For a new install, you are going to 'Create a virtual hard disk now'. Click 'Create'.

Now, you need to select the 'Hard disk file type'. I have a tendency to stick with the default settings. However, there are reasons to educate yourselves over these different file types. It turns out that in some instances, you can actually fire up a VM from other VM platforms, as long as the virtual hard disk type is compatible. So, this decision can be an important one. But, as I said, I tend to stick with defaults and that is what I am going to do here by clicking 'Next'.

Yet another decision we have to make regarding the virtual hard disk is whether or not it is going to be dynamic as opposed to fixed. Each has a legitimate purpose. Dynamic allows the size of the virtual hard disk to grow as necessary. But, this trade that flexibility with speed which is what you get if you have a fixed size hard drive. This choice really depends on your needs. If you have limited space on your physical hard disk, you may want to select fixed size in order to make sure the virtual hard disk size does not get out of control. I am simply going to click 'Next'.

The next screen allows you to configure the location of the virtual hard disk and set a size for it. Click 'Create' to complete the creation of the VM.

So now, we have created the VM. But, we're still not done. We have just created the shell of the VM. There is still not OS installed on that virtual machine just yet. With your newly create shell of a VM created, click on 'Start" to start up your VM.

Because there is no OS loaded on the VM yet, your virtualization window is going to be empty as seen below.

What we need to do is to tell the VM software where the ISO file we downloaded from DreamSpark is located. Click on 'Devices', hover over 'Optical Drives', and then select 'Choose Disk Image'. Navigate to where ever you downloaded your ISO image to and select that ISO file.

Then navigate back to the 'Machine" button on the navigation bar and select 'Reset'. This will reboot your newly created VM, pointing to the ISO file to boot from and install the OS.

At this point, you simply go through the setup process for the particular OS you are installing.

This is really just an overview. There are LOTS of features of Virtual Box which make it an ideal playground for virtual labs, learning about technology, applications, viruses, networks, etc. VERY cool stuff. Hopefully you fine this useful. If you think of anything I have left out, need to add, or would like to see yourself, drop me a note and I will see about getting it created. Thanks and enjoy.

Methodically Evaluating Your Security Situation

Security is as much an art as it is a science. While we can teach the science side of security by emphasizing the need to methodically approach security, the art side can only be developed through practice and careful creativity. Part of my students' semester projects is to address the security needs of an organization. I cannot emphasize enough that security is a design decision, not a product to be applied after the network is assembled. Designing a network with security in mind is different because it impacts the protocols, devices, and other network components we choose. For example, if we want to segment the network at layer 2, we need to make sure the switch we recommend supports VLANs. Likewise, if we are trying to segment the network design at layer 3, we will require additional routers to link the various segments. Security is a process, not hardware and software. Security truly is job security because it is a never ending battle to protect systems from obsolescence, natural disasters, human ineptitude, malicious attacks, etc. As a result, I tell them that they need to take a methodical and logical approach to addressing the security of an organization as it relates to their network and computer systems. Failure to do so will result in a hodge-podge of countermeasures that likely reflect the bias of the designer and fail to provide comprehensive protection to the system.

The first thing I would recommend is familiarizing yourself with Microsoft's Security Assessment Tool 4.0. When you first launch it, you will encounter the screen below.

Click the yellow 'Start' button in the bottom right corner and start answering a few basic questions about your organization. These tend to be relatively high level questions that do not require a computer science degree to answer. For example, insert a name under 'Company Name'. How many employees does your company have? Etc. As you answer each question, scroll down to the bottom and select 'Next' in the bottom right corner of the screen to advance to the next page. This step is just creating a profile of your organization.

Once you reach the end of the questions, click the yellow 'Create New Assessment' half way down on the left hand side of the screen. This will present you with the following dialog box. Select 'New' and name your assessment.

I named mind 'Semester Project: Security Assessment'. Then click 'OK'.

Now, you need to start assessing the security posture of the organization. You will be guided through a series of questions that help you to determine the state of your infrastructure, application, operations, and people security.

Answer each of the questions, scrolling down and then click 'Next' in the bottom right to advance to the next page. Depending on your specific answers, some sub-questions may or may not need to be addressed. Those that do not need to be addressed will be grayed out. Once you get to the final screen and have finished answering the questions, a 'Reports' button will appear at the bottom of the navigation bar on the left.

Click on that and you will be presented with the 'Summary Report' Which can be seen below. Additionally, you have two additional tabs which can prove useful. The second tab includes and option to save the report as a DOCX file or as an image file. Alternatively, you can print the report if you wish (HINT: You could potentially print it as a PDF).

The reports has LOTS of useful information but there are a few things that are particularly important for our purposes. For example, below is an example of the Risk-Defense Distribution figure that can be helpful in informing you where you should be concentrating your use of countermeasures.

What I like about this tool is that it gives you categories of assets that you need to protect such as infrastructure, applications, operations, and people which you can use to classify your assets and it shows the areas where you need to consider implementing appropriate countermeasures to protect against, the threats identified from the tool and as can be seen below, prioritizes your need for appropriate countermeasures.

Once you have identified the areas of risk, this should inform you as to the areas where you need to more thoroughly refine your countermeasures. For example, the figure above indicates that operations and infrastructure are at greater risk and the defense in depth is lowest for applications. The countermeasures that we propose should probably tend to focus in these areas so that we can lower our risk and increase our defenses. To look at this from a "hacker's" perspective, I might want to attack this organization's applications since it is their weakest area of defense.

The result is the implementation of various countermeasures that are targeted to help shore up areas where your organization scores more poorly on. Is this the only approach? Of course not. There are lots of approaches. In general, some of the very early approaches to security were simple checklists. This was nice because it was intuitive and easy to develop but lacked any sort of customization for organizations in various industries and of various sizes. Using this approach, one might list assets down the rows and various threats across the columns. Using a numbered list below for various countermeasures, one could populate various cells as appropriate.

Schuessler, J. (2013). Contemporary Threats and Countermeasures: A Security Evaluation. Journal of Information Privacy and Security, 9(2), 20. jips.utep.edu

Personally, I like this approach as it is very intuitive and easy to follow along. But, this approach can be improved. Some of these assets are more important that others. Some threats are more likely to occur than others. Some threats, if realized, can be more catastrophic that others. Using some additional columns, rows, and/or color, you could make the table more valuable by estimating the degree of threat, likelihood of occurrence, degree of protection. In the sample Google Sheet linked above, I have added some additional columns to incorporate the BRP and DiDI scores to calculate the risk associated with each type of asset scored by the MS Security Assessment Tool. For example, the BRP for Infrastructure was 13%. For Applications, it was 11%, and so on. Similarly, the DiDI score for Infrastructure was 25%, for Applications was 47%, etc. By multiplying the respective numbers, you can determine the risk for each category. Finally, you are able to calculate the risk for each type of asset within each category. I simply weighted each asset, making sure all assets within a category totaled the overall category weight. This shows which assets need to be focused employing various countermeasures.

	Impact (BRP Score in Percent)	Liklihood (1-DiDI Score in Percent)	Risk (Impact x Liklihood - Higher Values Represent More Risk Requiring More Attention)
Infrastructure	13.00%	25.00%	3.25%
Routers	4.00%	4.00%	0.16%
Switches	1.00%	10.00%	0.10%
Servers	4.00%	6.00%	0.24%
Media	4.00%	5.00%	0.20%
Applications	11.00%	47.00%	5.17%
Operating Systems	1.00%	10.00%	0.10%
Front Office Applications	1.00%	10.00%	0.10%
Back Office Applications	1.00%	10.00%	0.10%
Data	8.00%	17.00%	1.36%
Operations	13.00%	16.00%	2.08%
Environment	5.00%	4.00%	0.20%
Security Policy	2.00%	4.00%	0.08%
Patch & Update Management	5.00%	4.00%	0.20%
Backup & Recovery	1.00%	4.00%	0.04%
People	7.00%	5.00%	0.35%
Administrators	4.00%	3.00%	0.12%
Internal Users	2.00%	1.00%	0.02%
External Users	1.00%	1.00%	0.01%

Still other valuable yet still somewhat intuitive approaches include something similar to use cases for various threats/assets as discussed in FitzGerald, Dennis, and Durcikova (2015). This is again a great approach and more comprehensive than the approach discussed above. However, this approach can also be quite tedious as a separate use-case needs to be completed for each asset.

The point is not to inundate you with different approaches but rather, to emphasize the need to take a methodical approach to identifying threats and appropriate countermeasures. We live in a world where resources are limited. If that is the case, we have to make sure that we are getting the most bang for our buck in security.

Physical Diagrams

One of the skills students need to develop is their ability to create high quality physical diagrams. If you Google 'physical diagrams', you will get over 73 million results. If you limit your results to images alone, you will see a plethora of different examples of what constitutes a physical diagram. The point is, there is some grey area when it comes to precisely what is meant by the term 'physical diagram'.

Perhaps because of my background in drafting and interest in architecture, my conceptualization of a physical diagram is perhaps a little different than what I typically see elsewhere. To me, a physical diagram starts with a floor plan. Not just any floor plan but one that is essentially a lighter version of an architectural drawing. In other words, walls, dimensions, electrical outlets, etc need to be indicated on the drawing. Scale is important as this feeds into your wireless design as well. Some people might refer to this as a wiring schematic. But, to me, a physical diagram is like a wiring schematic on steroids.

If you've already got an architectural drawing, great. Otherwise, it takes a little more effort. Get out your tape measure and go to town documenting the physical space you are going to install your network. Make note of the materials the walls are made out of (brick, wood, sheet rock, etc...again, this will pay off when you go to develop your wireless diagram. Record all if this information on a sheet of paper and once complete, translate your scribbles to a Visio diagram. Take your time here to master Visio. There are lots of tutorial videos out there on Visio. If you are choosing networking as a profession, I would recommend that you all become Visio ninjas.

Now you can get started with the networking part of the diagram. Start placing your various components on the diagram, taking care to be consistent with the items you actually have (or will be getting). Far too often, I see students place clients, servers, or other networking node/components on their physical diagram that they did not account for on their logical diagrams or cost analyses. For the nodes and network components, scale is not quite as important as it is for the walls in your diagram. In other words, you want to make the nodes and network components easy to see and recognize for what they are.

Include reasonable layouts of your network cabling. How are you going to route your cables? Some of this has to do with whether or not this is a new facility, existing, and construction of the facility. If it is currently being built, it may be quite easy to run cabling through the walls. The end results look nice, requires less effort than some other approaches, but costs more in cabling. If you are installing in an existing facility, you may want to run it through the attic and drop it down inside the walls. This will cost less in cabling but will take more time and cost more in labor to install. With any luck, the facility may have a drop ceiling which will make things easier. You can run cables along the floor, along the edges of the room but this really should be avoided for any sort of permanent solution. The reason your decision regarding how you are going to route cables is important is that since you used scale in your drawing, you can now more accurately "guestimate" how much cabling you need. Without scale, you cannot do that. For a small facility, this is probably not important. But, as the size increases and the higher quality (more expensive) medium is used, the costs go up. The last thing regarding cabling, as it relates to your diagram includes color. Are there parts of the network that are on different subnets or different VLANs? Why not use color to differentiate one VLAN from another? It makes it more clear about how different nodes and parts of the network relate to one another.

Now, you are starting to get close to your final product. Again, I love to have configuration information included on diagrams. Things like Gateways, DNS servers, IP addresses, subnets, MAC addresses, etc. Careful here. As this is a physical diagram, you should focus on physical characteristics of your design. Things like IP addresses are logical in nature. Ideally, you would use Visio's layer feature because your drawing can get out of hand quite quickly with the level of detail. Layers allow you to selectively see different components of the diagram. Perhaps you have a "configuration information" layer so that it does not clutter up the rest of the diagram when you do not need that information. Figure 1 below is an example of a good physical diagram. This was submitted by a former student of mine who is quite skilled at using Visio. While it might a bit cluttered, it represents a nice job of using color to differentiate different security zones.

Figure 1: Physical Diagram

Not to be outdone by the diagram itself is the narrative used to describe the physical aspects of your diagram. The narrative, in which the diagram should be embedded somewhere in the middle, is your opportunity to discuss things that are perhaps a little more difficult to communicate in the diagram itself. For example, what type of wiring did you choose? Why? What are the pros and cons of that particular choice? Why is it a good solution in this particular case? Are you recommending UTP or STP? Why/why not? How much cabling will you need? Again, since your diagram is to scale, you should be able to articulate how your are going to route cables and approximate how much cabling you will need.

The key to this and the logical diagram is keeping it updated; treating it as a living document. If you are like me, you like documentation being in order. But, most people under the crunch of trying to keep the network up and going, tend to let documentation slide and it quickly loses its usefulness when that happens. The key is to set aside some time and actively engage in maintaining network documentation. This is a network management function which we will talk about in later posts.

So, I put it to you. What information do you feel is a must when it comes to physical diagrams? What absolutely has to be there for it to serve a useful purpose?

Logical Diagrams

One of the early tasks I have my students in my networking class do is to create logical diagrams. This is a big deal. I regularly see students throw together a few icons and consider it a diagram without putting any real artistic flair or real design considerations into their work. I must say, I too was never formally taught to create diagrams but the reality is, there is a real art to this. As part of our assessment process, we have even identified this as an issue, not only in networking, but also in databases and systems analysis and design as we routinely see students struggle in the area of diagramming.

This has led me to look for sources to help students improve their diagrams. I have put together my own characteristics as well. Things like including the cloud in the top left corner since we read left to right and top to bottom; not including a firewall icon unless you are specifically recommending a hardware firewall as part of the design, etc.

But, I also learn a lot from my students. After all, one of the reasons I got into academia was because I love to learn. each semester, I learn things from students who also happen to be practitioners. One semester, I had a student who submitted some of the best designs I have ever seen. They were easy to read, logically developed, and top notch all the way. The student did an excellent job of using color to represent open and secured parts of the network. The student logically grouped clients and included important configuration information to aid in configuration and troubleshooting. The student did a phenomenal job. See Figure 1 below for an example of the diagram he submitted to a case the class was presented with.

Figure 1: Logical Design

I guess the point in writing this is that it is clear this student spent some time and effort on his diagrams and he took pride in his work. This is the kind of effort I want out of all of my students. Take the time to learn MS Visio. Learn it well. Become a data visualization expert and use that expertise to be able to accurately and effectively communicate everything you need to communicate using logical, physical, and wireless diagrams; not to mention ERDs, use cases, etc for databases and systems analysis and design. It can really help to set yourself apart from your peers. The video below does a nice job of illustrating some of the basics concepts and features of MS Visio to create network diagrams.

Of course, it does not end with the diagram itself. And, lest I lead you astray, you should not start off with your diagram. Rather, your diagram should be inserted immediately following the first paragraph in which it is mentioned. Which brings me to another point; all tables and figures should be labeled. In our case, this if "Figure 1: Logical Diagram".

A THOROUGH narrative is necessary as you can never be sure about who might be reading your documentation. Some may be more visually responsive while others may respond better to narrative. Your narrative needs to clearly explain in plain English what you are trying to communicate in the diagram. In some cases, you can communicate things via your narrative that you cannot with your diagram alone. For example, using your narrative, you can explain some of the design choices made. Why are you including an unsecured wireless access point to your design? Since you are not aware of how technical the person is who might be reading your proposal, you need to include both enough technical aspects to address that persons questions but also explain things in plain English for those decision makers who may have the say on whether or not your proposal gets approved but lack the technical background of others.

Regardless, know that this is an art. The more you practice, the better you get. So, practice, practice, practice. Get good at this. It will be an invaluable skill.

Tenure Packets

So, I am working on my tenure packet. Yes, it is that time...FINALLY. I suppose I've got it pretty easy. I have a relatively recent colleague that kept his tenure packet who has graciously shared it with me. Also, we use a package named Digital Measures which makes creating our tenure packets relatively easily...as long as you keep it current. Fortunately, as long as you keep it relatively current, when you print out your final tenure packet from Digital Measures, you can download it as a Word document which you can then edit as necessary. This is great for being able to pop in those course evaluations and whatnot.

Despite all of this "help", it has taken me approximately 2 days of work and I am still not done yet. Hopefully I can finish this up tomorrow. But, in doing this, I have been amazed at the amount of "content" that I have in my packet. Various committees, journal publications, conference presentations, classes taught... I guess it really sneaks up on you. I think this is why it is so important to keep your Digital Measures, Vita, and any other tool(s) you might have at your disposal. Failure to do so will surely result in missed content which, for tenure purposes is not worth the risk.

At the end of the day, I think it is a worthwhile process to keep such documentation up to date. I think it helps you to determine where you might be light. If you have a lot of service and teaching but not a lot of research, it can be easily spotted if your documentation is up to date. So get on it. Get some pubs out there. Weak on service? Start volunteering for committees, tasks forces, etc. But without your documentation, you are only guessing as to how your accomplishments might be perceived.

So, keep your Vita, Digital Measures, etc up to date. File away in an organized way your publications and presentations. Keep your evaluations organized. You will appreciate your efforts later when you are going up for tenure. Next stop, full professor.

Online Course Assessment

I am a member of our university's assessment committee. Additionally, I am a member of my college's assurance of learning committee. While I think assessment is important, I think some people give me too much credit for the work I do on assessment. Having said that, I have found that it can be quite useful for course and hopefully program improvement.

At the course level, I have implemented a pre and post test to get an understanding of student's incoming and outgoing knowledge. That is kind of cool. I can, each semester, show statistically that students are leaving with more knowledge that what they entered the class with. But, the last question on each test is different. On the pre-test, it is a link to a Google Form in which I can gain more insight into student's learning styles. I use a validated instrument for this. For the post-test, I replace that link with an online course evaluation link, also a validated instrument.

Now here's what I have found recently that I like so much about this approach. Because the data is captured in a Google Form, I created summary data from the various items so I could compare the 6 dimensions associated with the instrument. Then, I made graphs for each dimension. Finally, I also created a "graph" of the comments. Once all these were created, I copied the embed code and pasted it into my personal web site for each course in which I had data. Similarly, I created a page in my Blackboard shells title "Course Evaluations". In this way, my students and the public for that matter can see exactly what to expect from my various courses.

What I REALLY like is that as students continue to evaluation my courses, the graphs are automatically updated. This is really cool. What I have found is that I am really good at my networking classes but need to work on my decision support class a little more. I feel somewhat safe regarding the feedback as it is a private link shared through my password protected Blackboard shell so it should only be populated by students. But, it significantly reduces the time and effort on my part and yet can provide students and myself with some meaningful information regarding my classes. For a sample, click the link below:

http://drschuessler.dlinkddns.com:8080/Teaching/Tarleton/BCIS5304/BCIS5304.aspx#sthash.AJNKnvgi.dpbs

If you are interested in the instrument, the information for the article is:
Criteria for Assessing Student Satisfaction with Online Courses
Rothman, Romeo, Brennan, and Mitchel (2011)
International Journal for e-Learning Security, Volume 1, Issue 1/2, March/June 2011.

Valuation of an IT Project

Valuing an IT project is easier said than done. If you are lucky, you work for an organization that dictates the financial metrics used to evaluate a particular type of project. But, if you are putting together a proposal for an organization that has no such requirements, how do you show your potential client the value of your proposal?

Ideally, multiple financial metrics should be calculated to show the value of your proposal from different perspectives. But which one(s) should you pick? ROI? NPV? Payback Period? The list goes on an on. I would recommend taking a more methodical approach to which financial metrics should be included in your proposal.

First, lets start with costs. These are the easiest thing to calculate. Simply add up the cost of all of you hardware and software. Don't stop there. You like to eat don't you? In other words, your time is worth something too. You need to be paid for your design time and estimated installation time. What is a good rate to charge? Check out http://www.payscale.com/ for rates in your area for different types of jobs.

Now, here is where the methodology part comes in. Is this proposal geared towards helping the organization make more money by being more productive for example? Or, does your proposal help the organization reduce costs and thus save money? The idea for this comes from Porter's Value Chain in which he argues about two type of activities that occur within organizations. They can be loosely grouped into Primary and Support activities. Primary Activities are geared to actually producing the product of service while Support Activities are geared towards helping the organization continue to function "behind the scenes" so to speak.

If the solution your proposal addresses is for the organization's Primary Activities, then I would argue that your focus needs to focus on how much money the new system can help generate. Traditional financial metrics like ROI, NPV, and Payback Period are good metrics for this purpose. They all provide different perspectives on how a project affects the bottom line. I recommend that you use multiple financial metrics as often times, it is difficult to determine the preference that a decision maker might have. If you already have multiple metrics calculated in your proposal, it looks like you have done your due diligence.

If your proposal focuses on Support Activities, your proposal should be focusing on keeping costs to a minimum. This is not to say a cheap solution is in order. Rather, the focus is on minimizing the long term costs of the solution. So, while it may cost more for a particular type of cabling, it may make sense to use it if it does not have to be replaced for a longer period of time. TCO and NCO are two common methods for evaluating these types of projects. For more a more detailed example of calculations, view my online text.

With both of these approaches, it is not enough to simply create the calculations. You need to interpret them as well. Tell the reader of your proposal what the Payback Period is for example. Do not assume they know. Explain the assumptions you have made. Source your products so you can easily find the documentation to them quickly. This is a volatile market. Prices can change quickly and having your prices in your proposal based on older data can be the difference in getting your proposal accepted or rejected. Remember, this is a dance. So, it is not just about listing the figures and being done with it. You are telling (and selling) a story. So, sell your solution.