Many IT projects require physical alterations to an existing network. For example, I recently did a consulting job for a doctor's office in which I had to extend a small TCP/IP network to new office space adjacent to the existing space. The office restructuring project also included rearranging the front office to allow office staff to more efficiently handle incoming patients. This project required shuffling several existing systems between various workspaces and offices and adding a couple of new computers to the network. And, of course, my new client wanted all of this to occur with as little disruption of day-to-day business operation as possible. This type of engagement can be tricky. On a physical level, the project required setting up the new workstations and adding them to the network and disassembling and reassembling the existing workstations -- not to mention the time spent on a ladder fishing network cable through the confined spaces in the drop ceiling. Before you can start a project that involves altering an existing network about which you know little, you need to spend some time getting the lay of the land for the network -- network configuration, system names, IP addresses, MAC addresses, NIC info, server info, hub/switch capacity, printer info, and a million other details. You could go from system to system and manually gather the information, but that can be very time consuming and, if done during normal business hours, would be very disruptive to the day-to-day business operations. I discovered a very professional piece of shareware, NetworkView, which is billed as a "compact network discovery and management tool for Windows." Using NetworkView, I was able to quickly and easily gather all the information I needed about my client's network. NetworkView can be run from a floppy disk, so you don't have to install it on your client's computers. The set on the floppy can be as small as just the program's executable file or it can consist of the full program, which includes several database files and the Help system. The entire program will fit on a standard 1.44Mbyte floppy with room to spare, which will allow you to save the reports and maps generated by the program. Once I had NetworkView up and running, it took just minutes for the program to compile an inventory of the network and present a graphical map of the network that included all the information I needed and offered plenty of options for analysing and sorting that information in a worksheet view. I could then easily save the information to a file for later analysis or print it to use as a map while I worked on the network. Let's take a closer look. An overview of NetworkView While my primary use for NetworkView at the physician's office was to quickly and easily document my client's TCP/IP network, I hardly scratched the surface of all of NetworkView's features. It really is a powerful program that can be of benefit to system administrators as well as consultants. NetworkView performs two main functions: Discovery and Monitoring. In Discovery mode, the program searches the network and compiles a network-based inventory of all the systems it finds. In Monitoring mode, NetworkView can continuously monitor the status of each system on the network. As it does so, NetworkView can create log files and send out audio or e-mail alerts when the status changes.