Introduction

Now you are a Sniffer Pro guru. You can analyze the network, isolate problems, proactively take charge of being warned about events reaching a threshold, and leap large protocol stacks in a single bound. If you have more questions, you know where and how to research the problems and answers. A few questions, though: Can you explain the problems to management or to a client? Can you take all the outstanding information you have compiled and generate a report detailing why the network is acting the way it is? If you can answer Yes to these questions, you have taken a major step in breaking the boundaries between technicians and upper management, and this is the way you can justify that costly upgrade, if it s needed. If there is one thing that says it all, it is a graphical chart with accurate data. If the chart points in the red, the news must be bad, right?

Let s venture into learning to create reports. By the end of the chapter, you will be able to write your own. We also view the makings of a sample report based on a real-life problem, giving you an idea of how the process works from start to finish as well as an idea of what your reports should say.

Reporting Fundamentals

Reporting is a function that can be considered a headache, but is a necessary part of network and protocol analysis. Any network and protocol analyst in the field knows that...