NOTE:
The NAS website is no longer being updated. The information on this page may be out of date and/or incorrect.

Introduction to NASH

Welcome

Welcome to the Network Administrator's Survival Handbook, or NASH for short. NASH is a diverse collection of reference materials for University of Illinois' network administrators. In it you'll find basic instructions on installing and configuring network hardware and software, information about the campus network, answers to common networking questions, important phone numbers and e-mail addresses, bibliographies, glossaries, and much more.

NASH is brought to you by CITES' Network Administrator Support group, better known as NAS. Many of the documents in NASH were written by NAS and other staff in the UIUC CITES group. Some parts of NASH, however, are pre-existing documents such as users guides, articles, and papers written by on- and off-campus authors, and freely available on the Internet. Wherever possible, we have tried to point users to the authoritative sources for such materials. The online version of NASH also includes links to many other information servers on the Internet.

NASH and the World Wide Web

NASH was originally conceived as a printed handbook, not a collection of web documents. In order to make this material available on the Web as quickly as possible, we will make as few adjustments to the original text as possible. Thus you may occasionally encounter expressions and references that are decidedly out of place in an HTML document, such as, "see pages such and such."

However, due to the costs associated with printing a copy of the NASH for each network administrator, and the time needed to collate and prepare the NASH for printing, NAS regrets that we will probably not make another print run. The NASH will continue to be updated online, and this site will be the primary access point.

NASH Updates

One of the unfortunate characteristics of published information about networking is that such material is often out of date, even before it reaches the public. NASH will probably be no exception. In cases where information is likely to change very quickly, we will try to tell you where and how to get the most recent data.

One of the beauties of publishing a document on the world wide web is that you never have to have the document absolutely complete. It can always remain a work in progress. So while you can expect certain types of information such as software version numbers, filenames, network adresses, HTML document links, etc. to be occasionally obsolete, with your help we can make sure this is kept to a minimum. Therefore...

We Want Your Feedback

NASH will undoubtedly change and grow over time, hopefully in response to the needs and feedback of UIUCnet network administrators. Comments, suggestions, corrections, and contributions are always welcome. Please send all NASH related e-mail to net-trouble@uiuc.edu.

Notice

All product and service names that are known to be registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers and/or providers are printed in all upper case letters or initial caps throughout this publication.

CITES shall not be liable for errors or omissions resulting in damages from the use of this information contained in this publication.


NASH Table of Contents