Development of an integrated system for automated network administration: a case study

At the University of Liverpool, the central computing services department, the Computer Laboratory, is developing and maintaining computer networks to provide campus wide computing facilities. The department is responsible for running systems to support undergraduate teaching, research, general university administration and various support services such as the library and building maintenance departments. Each aspect of the service is run on a different machine (or machines). Support is also offered for microcomputer users across a range of machines and recently a number of self contained (20/30 workstation) local area networks (LANs) for teaching have been established. This paper describes techniques which are being developed by the University Computer Laboratory to administer its complex and rapidly growing network of equipment