BMO Training Objectives

From AptivateOER

Contents 1 Expectations 2 Skills of a Network Administrator 3 Survey Requests 4 Brainstorm 4.1 Things to cover 4.2 Aims 4.3 Objectives

[edit] 1 Expectations

From the Expectations brainstorm on Monday:

• Learn about the challenges of increased bandwidth
• Learning and navigating FreeBSD, commands (3)
• Gain confidence in network administration
• Management of Users (directory services, centralised authentication) (2)
• Real time service monitoring
• Wireless networks
  • Planning wireless networks for optimal coverage
  • Securing wireless networks
• Identify and restrict peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic (2)
• Measuring bandwidth received from the ISP (3)
• Bandwidth use monitoring (2)
  • Break down by department (3)
  • Real time monitoring
  • Reporting and graphing
  • Monitoring web use by user
• Bandwidth management (4)
  • Content filtering
  • Restricting by users and groups
  • Traffic shaping
  • How to block specific websites
• Network management tools
• Network security
  • Building a strong firewall
  • Penetration testing
  • Intrusion detection and reporting
• Team building
  • Exchanging ideas
• Planning large networks (campus and wide area) (2)
• Spam filtering
  • Far side email scrubbing (remote email filtering)
  • Blocking open relays
• How to deploy IPv6
• Peering and BGP (6)
• Routing
• Developing and enforcing acceptable use policies

[edit] 2 Skills of a Network Administrator

• Bandwidth monitoring
  • ntop
  • PRTG
  • Smokeping
  • Cisco Netflow
• Cisco Quality of Service (QoS) controls and prioritisation
• Backups
  • rsync for remote backups
  • Preparation for disasters
  • Learning from experience
  • Using disk images for backup
  • Backup policy and timing
• Knowing who to ask
• Implementing good policy
• Network planning
  • Identifying when infrastructure needs upgrading
  • Choosing appropriate solutions within budget
  • Network design and segmentation
  • VLANs
  • Spanning tree protocol
• Web filtering
  • Dansguardian
  • Squidguard
• Spam filtering
  • TDMA/TMDA
  • Greylisting
• Firewalling
  • wfilter
  • Cisco access lists
  • Clarkconnect

[edit] 3 Survey Requests

Specifically requested by participants:

• The basics designing up a network in its entirety (see NSRC summer course)
  • Designing ip addressing scheme
  • Coming up with policies
  • Strategic plans
  • Action plans
  • SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)
  • the best ways to communicate this to the users
  • planning for future expansion
• How to monitor and maintain an efficient network:
  • bandwidth monitoring and management
  • QOS (Quality of Service)
  • bandwidth shaping (traffic shaping, packet shaping)
• How to install essential services in the network especially:
  • DNS
  • PROXY
  • how to manage various network services
• an exciting learning experience that will go along way in shaping all the participants to be accomplished network engineers in their institution
• a forum that we will be able to share together and learn from each other
• Interconnecting branches (WAN planning, WAN design)
• cisco routers configurations,
• setting up robust linux email servers
• Spam Solution for co-orporate (corporate email?)
• new technology (? gigabit networks? wimax? 802.1x? virtualisation?)
• Network Set-up and configuration on various Operating systems platforms.
• Bandwidth use and management.
• Effective Network monitoring and tools to monitor.
• Common and complex network problems and how to solve.
• Become a Trainer of trainers

Points noted by looking at survey responses:

• Why is policy not being enforced where it exists?
• Why do institutions use static IPs rather than DHCP?
• Windows desktop security (domains, group policies)
• More outbound than inbound traffic? Virus/worm/botnet infection?

[edit] 4 Brainstorm

Brainstorm on aims and objectives by Chris and Mark.

[edit] 4.1 Things to cover

• Ethernet Layer
  • Bridging
• TCP / UDP Principles
  • Flows

• Ping diagnostics
  • ICMP
  • Packet Loss
  • Latency
  • Jitter

• Routing
  • What a router does
  • Queueing --> Packet Loss
  • NAT

(See AFNOG Materials?)

• Monitoring a network
  • mrtg
  • Ping
  • traceroute / mtr
  • Wireshark / tcpdump
    • filtering
    • graphing
  • pmgraph /

• Performance of boxes
  • SQL DB
  • Log size
  • How to mitigate
  • Slow Queries

• Documentation
  • How Much?
  • Network maps as a diagnostic tool

• Quality of service
  • Guaranteed bandwidth
  • Bursting
  • Fair sharing
    • Stochastic Fairness Queuing
    • SFQ tuning
  • Queue disciplines
    • RED/ WFQ
    • Live Graphs

• Anonymous users vs authenticated users
• Proxy servers
• Individual awareness of use

• User satisfaction
  • How to run an effective tech support system

[edit] 4.2 Aims

By attending this course, students will get:

• Desire for improvement / empowerment / confidence
• A BMO box they build themselves and have practiced rebuilding
• Able to install the tools on other machines to spread the load
• Understand network traffic
  • who is doing what and why
  • how to influence behaviour
    • Baseline measurement
    • Planning and executing interventions
    • Monitoring and evaluating results
    • System response (measurement)
• Technical skills for intervention
• Problem solving and planning skills
  • Forming and testing hypotheses
• Community of practice / support network
• Ability to train others in all of the above

[edit] 4.3 Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will have experience of success at:

• Installing and using their own choice of tools (e.g. Ubuntu, pmgraph)
• Measure: packet loss, latency, download speed
• Using Apache and Firefox to measure download speed
• Use ping and traceroute to measure packet loss, latency and jitter,
• Use traceroute to understand routing
• Use Wireshark to diagnose L2 problems (Ethernet)
  • to draw graphs of TCP traffic over time and interpret them
• Simulate poor connections and experience their effects on Skype, web browsing and downloads
• Use pmgrph and wireshark to find out who is doing what on a network
• Configure Squid proxy server for authentication and logging
• Negotiate with management and staff what to block and when
• Blocking different kinds of traffic (e.g. HTTP, IM) using router or BMO box for certain IP addresses (make exceptions) and times of day
• Using quota systems and league tables to influence behaviour
• Make a diagnostic hypothesis, test it and measure its effects
• Experience working together to solve problems (pairing)
• Experience unfair sharing of a slow connection
• Implement fairer sharing policies: queue disciplines, quotas
• Measure and demonstrate (e.g. convince an ISP) that a connection is slower than it should be.
• Understand the expected quality of service of different connections
• Experience negotiating people's expectations of service (e.g. problem solving) in a helpdesk environment
• Experience of recording too much data (pmacct, SQL DB) and know how to avoid it
• Draw a network map and use it to solve problems