Undocumented Networks
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I can't tell you how many projects I've worked on in which the customer has little to no network documentation. The reason for the lack of network documentation is varied. In many cases this is both the fault of the customer and the vendor / consultant who designed and implemented the network. The vendor just does not do it and the customer does not press hard enough for it. In some cases, technology consultants do not feel it's important enough or want to lock the customer into having to call "them" if something goes wrong or a configuration needs to be changed.

Not only is this poor practice on the side of the consultant, it can have a dramatic affect on the future growth of the customer, increase the costs of future network upgrades and diagnostics, and can negatively impact the security of the customers network.

The Results Of A Undocumented Network
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Before I tell you the basic items that need to be documented with regards to computer networks, I first want to give you examples of what I have "not" seen documented, and what problems this has caused.

During one of my past projects, which was primarily to implement a new firewall and to secure many of the internal systems , I ran into some really incredible issues. None of the primary server systems were documented. No one knew what server did what, how much memory, disk space, what type of processor(s), and in some cases, did not know what Operating System was installed. And worse than that, during my initial review, we located three servers in a closet, on a different floor, that no one even knew existed!

Because of the lack of network documentation, no one knew what was suppose to be done to maintain their enterprise Anti-Virus system. When I finally determined what the admin password was to login to the Anti-Virus services, I found that virus signatures had not been updated in over six months. Then we found that the system was not even functioning and nearly 90% of systems on the network were infected with virus and worms (and not the annoying kind either, the destructive kind)

We also found there were four different tape backup servers, and again, because of the lack of network documentation, none of them had been maintained. The customer just kept changing tapes. And do you know what, none of the backup jobs had been running for months. Talk about a false sense of security!

The very last thing I