Documenting a schools network setup

amen

My daughter’s school have several networked pcs (various OS), printers, networked interactive white boards (connect to the internet, stream media etc). They have a parent who was looking after everything who is no longer interested. The school has no idea of what they, what it does etc.

I was going to help them document what they have, ip, passwords, usernames etc. This could be used as a troubleshooting document.

Anyone know of a standard template used to documenting a network setup, accounts, privilegaes etc?

Anyone know of any good tools to do a network discovery and identify each pc, configuration, os etc?

Feel free to move to appropriate forum

chin_grin

Use this to scan all IP's connected.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/networkscanner/

You'll need to type in the range yourself but once the machine is on and connected it'll pick it up. Should pick up the printers too once they're not just locally connected.

JonathanAnon

To use the network scanner, you will have to power on all of the PCs... I've done inventories for a good few schools, and you're really just better off running round with a notepad.. use something like Belarc Advisor if you need to pull the full spec from the computer.. And then you can put the information in Excel later.. You should be running DHCP anyway.. so if you take a list of the hostnames, this would be better...

The network scanner seems clever, but you will end up missing something..

chin_grin

JonathanAnon wrote: »

To use the network scanner, you will have to power on all of the PCs... I've done inventories for a good few schools, and you're really just better off running round with a notepad.. use something like Belarc Advisor if you need to pull the full spec from the computer.. And then you can put the information in Excel later..

The network scanner seems clever, but you will end up missing something..

True, especially if there are any devices locally installed (printers\scanners).

+1 for Belarc. But it might be a little too info intensive for what you're looking for.

As mentioned you might want to jot up an excel sheet with headings like (these are just for example): Location, Machine Name (found by right clicking my computer), IP, Username,

Might as well run an ipconfig /all on each machine if you can.

JonathanAnon

Just looking back on my notes from the schools I did.. I had to take down the following..

Tag No. (Serial Number)
PC Type (Model PC)
RAM
Operating System
Issues

I wrote down issues for the ones that I could not fix within the time given.. Also you might take down the hostname, which you will also find under the IPCONFIG /ALL mentioned above... This can be handy if there is (for example) one PC with a virus that is broadcasting ..

amen

Some great suggestions here.

Thanks for all the help/suggestions.

D'Agger

I'm creating an asset list at work at the moment but in a company it'd obviously be different, still hope these few headings help you:

PC Name
IP Address
MAC Address
User Assigned to PC
Port Used

I'm organising it then by physical location i.e. Departments

Naikon

A wiki system is GREAT for handling network documentation.

D'Agger

Naikon wrote: »

A wiki system is GREAT for handling network documentation.

Just to follow up on this - would you have an further information on setting up the wiki etc.

Interested to see how you would go about it.

Thanks in advance

fionny

PaulieC wrote: »

Just to follow up on this - would you have an further information on setting up the wiki etc.

Interested to see how you would go about it.

Thanks in advance

This might help:

http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Wiki

PrzemoF

OP, this might be interesting for you if you have an andoid phone and if there is a wifi access point. I tested it on my network and it detected all connected devices (2 routers, laptop-lan, printer-lan, another laptop-wifi)

http://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=network%20discovery&fdid=info.lamatricexiste.network&fdpage=1

edit: I just noticed the date.. OP, how you did that mapping?