Top five administrator tips of '05

Our administrator tips offer practical hints for enterprise-class network administrators, network designers, and system integrators. They focus on strategies for maximizing network uptime and efficiency while minimizing security risks and vulnerability.

Here we present you with our top five administrator tips of the year. These are the tips that our readers found most useful, most helpful and most interesting in 2005.

1. Changes to TCP/IP in Windows Vista
   Microsoft has made some major changes to the way that TCP/IP is implemented in the next version of its operating system, Windows Vista. Learn what they are and what they mean to your network.

2. The nasty truth about spyware
   While spyware programs are nothing new, they continue to grow in virulence and sophistication. Anyone that uses a computer and the Internet should be aware of the risk these programs present. While they can be troublesome to the home user, they can pose an even bigger risk to a corporate network.

3. The top five most common Windows networking mistakes
   It's one thing if a genius hacker comes up with some inspired way of exploiting your system, it's another thing all together if some novice takes advantage of a silly mistake. So make sure you aren't making them. In this article, contributor Jonathan Hassell reviews the top five most common Windows networking mistakes he's come across.

4. Ten cabling tips in 10 minutes
   This series focuses on the cabling used in today's networks. While there are a lot of different types of cabling in today's networks, this series covers the most common cables, including UTP, CAT5 straight through and crossover, Ethernet, fiber and more.

5. Your NIC could be killing your network performance
   So when you bought that Gigabit Ethernet NIC for your server, how much throughput did you think it was capable of? 1,000 Mpbs? Or at least 900 Mbps? Why would you think that; just because Gigabit means 1,000,000,000 bps and it was written on the network interface card (NIC) packaging? In this tip, Loki Jorgenson delves into the highly variable performance of NICs.

Visit our administrator tip index for a complete listing of our useful tools.

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