NEW: Basic Documentation for Small Business Networks

Talk about going back to your roots . . . 

Many of you know that I started my writing with a book called The Network Documentation Workbook, which included a series of documentation forms, best practices, and examples on how my first IT consulting business operated.

That book changed a great deal of our industry and standardized the way many people - especially in the SMB community - documented networks. It was published in 2005 and sold many thousands of copies all over the world. Harry Brelsford and SMB Nation were instrumental in helping this book reach a massive, world-wide audience.

Much of that book is now obsolete. But much of it is not!

Over in the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community, I've been teaching a series of courses on the fundamentals of DNS, networking, TCP/IP, and troubleshooting. Tomorrow - August 16th - I'm holding the last of these classes live. After that, all of these courses will be posted in the member content area along with a "roadmap" that pulls them altogether for each download.

This is a members-only class.

 

Link 1: Members check out the class here.

Updated Documentation Forms

As part of tomorrow's class, I created a special download with  a series of updated network documentation forms that everyone who serves small businesses will find useful.

This handy ten-page document covers what you need to know to document the basic TCP/IP-based network for small business. It includes the following contents:

- Network Specifications

- Network Diagram

- Network Summary Page

- IP Address Allocation

- Hard-Coded IP Addresses

- Router Configuration

- Firewall Configuration

All of these are accompanied by explanations. Most are also accompanied by examples of the forms when completed. This handout goes great with the mini course on Building the Basic Small Business Network.

Link 2: Members Download the Documentation handout here.

:-)