networking project report

How to Create a Network Assessment Report with This Template

As an MSP, your role is to ensure your client’s network operates without a hitch. Checking the health of their network and sharing your findings in a network assessment report helps you identify potential vulnerabilities so you can fix them sooner rather than later.

Creating these reports is a critical part of an MSP’s role, but it’s also a tedious one. That’s why we’ve created a network assessment report template. This comprehensive template speeds up the reporting process while ensuring you don’t miss any important components. 

Download our free network assessment report template , then follow this step-by-step guide to find out how to conduct an Auvik network assessment .

You’ll also learn:

• What a network assessment is
• What a network assessment report is
• Why network assessment reports are important
• When to do a network assessment report
• Best practices for writing network assessment reports

Step-by-step guide to writing a network assessment report

• The top tools for performing a network assessment 

Get more from your network assessments

Wow clients by presenting your findings and recommendations in our easy-to-use report template

What is a network assessment?

A network assessment is essentially an audit of a network’s performance. This thorough investigation reveals how a network is architected, how network devices are connected, how the network is performing, and how safe the network is. Most importantly, a network assessment identifies network vulnerabilities so you can resolve them before they become a major issue for your clients.

What is a network assessment report?

A network assessment report is the document or presentation in which you compile the findings of a network assessment and present it to your client (or the party in charge of the network). A comprehensive network assessment report covers topics like inventory, firmware and software, network architecture, performance, misconfigurations, and security. 

This report also shows which actions have already been taken to remediate issues and presents recommendations for resolving newly discovered network problems.

Why is a network assessment report important?

Creating network assessment reports for clients is an essential part of network management . These reports are important because they:

• Serve as a record of the current state of the network.
• Reveal network bottlenecks that need to be resolved.
• Are the first step in improving network performance.
• Identify compliance issues, which can help prevent problems and fines.
• Reveal resources, like bandwidth and servers, that could be optimized.
• Find opportunities for improving network security.
• Guide strategies for network upgrades.
• Reduce network downtime by identifying problems.
• Reveal opportunities for reducing IT costs.
• Assist with capacity planning, such as by helping with 95th percentile bandwidth metering .

When to create a network assessment report

As an MSP, there are various instances in which it’s appropriate to conduct a network assessment and create a report for your client, including when:

• You begin working with a new client . A network assessment report can help guide the partnership and set client expectations.
• You or your client lacks visibility into the network . Network assessments and reports are investigative tools that help you better understand what you’re working with.
• There’s been a change in network performance . If systems consistently aren’t working like they used to, then it’s time to investigate what’s wrong.
• It’s time to make major changes to the network . For example, you may want to implement a new service or migrate data, such as from an on-premises system to a cloud-based system.
• Your client wants to reduce network costs . A report can help identify cost-saving opportunities, such as underutilized resources.

3 best practices for writing network assessment reports

Stick to these best practices when writing network assessment reports and you’ll create comprehensive reports that add value for your clients and save you time.

1. Use a network assessment report template

When you use a template for your network assessment reports, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you write one. You’ll save time on the assessment and report and can reinvest that time into addressing the issues you uncovered. Use our network assessment report template or create your own.

2. Keep your audience in mind

Before you write a single word of that report, identify who you’re writing it for. Knowing who you’re presenting your findings to will dictate how technical your writing should be.

For example, if you’re working with a company’s internal IT team, you can get as technical as you’d like. However, if your point of contact is the COO of a startup that doesn’t have an IT team, you should make the report easy to understand for someone who isn’t in the field and explain any jargon.

3. Make it thorough

Network assessment reports need to be comprehensive because they serve as a network guide for both you and your client. Include things that may be obvious to you and not your clients, like the network’s architecture. Also include problems like security vulnerabilities. Our network assessment report template can serve as a checklist that covers these topics and others, ensuring you don’t leave anything out.

Free network assessment tools

Looking for network assessment software to help generate better client reports? 

Our report template comes with detailed instructions for how to conduct assessments using Auvik specifically, our cloud-based network monitoring and management system. But you could alternatively use another network management tool to conduct an assessment and still use our template to create a report.

Here are some free network assessment tools you can try:

• Auvik is a cloud-based network monitoring and management system that helps rocket MSPs’ efficiency and capacity, while protecting their clients from network risk. If you’re not already using Auvik, you can test it out with a free trial .
• Zabbix is an open-source network monitoring solution designed for enterprise-scale networks.
• Monitorix is an open-source system monitoring tool designed for small servers that consists of a collector and CGI script. 

Without further ado, here’s our guide to conducting a network assessment and writing an accompanying network assessment report using our template.

This template includes sample findings and recommendations for illustrative purposes, along with instructions (indicated with gray, italicized text) on where to get and export the data from within Auvik. 

First things first, download our network assessment document and open it. Then, follow these section-by-section instructions.

On the cover page, add your company’s information and your client’s information as indicated.

The next section of the network assessment report is the summary. This page gives you the chance to present your client with a high-level overview of your assessment’s findings.

Here’s how to fill it out.

First, enter the date. Now you’re ready to write the report summary. You’ll want to provide a concise overview of your client’s network issues and accompanying recommendations. 

For example, if your client is using default passwords for most of their devices, note that in the summary and suggest a protocol for creating stronger passwords.

List problems in order of priority to focus your client’s attention on the most critical issues. This page essentially serves as a “cheat sheet” and can help to differentiate your services and facilitate conversations that get your prospect or client to the next step.

If your summary is more than a page long, consider omitting low priority issues here and saving them for the “Recommendations” section to avoid overwhelming your client.

Don’t forget to remove all instructions from this section and the rest of the network assessment template, and update the sample screenshots and recommendations with your own before presenting this report to your client.

On the next page of this network assessment report you’ll find a table of contents that reflects the sections in the template. The table of contents helps you and your clients navigate the report.

After you fill in the report template, some sections may shift to different pages, so you’ll need to update the contents table. To do this, click anywhere on the table. On the top left of the table, a box with a circular arrow and three dots will appear. Click the circular arrow. The table will refresh and automatically update to reflect the page numbers on which the sections are found.

State of the network

Now we’re getting into the meat of the report: the state of the network.

This paragraph introduces what your client will find in the rest of the report. Use it as-is or customize it as you see fit.

Start by assessing your client’s network inventory. Use your network assessment tool of choice to pull up a list of the devices on your client’s network.

If you’re using Auvik, open your Home Dashboard, then click Export. Open up the file and go to the Devices sheet. Then, select columns B-E. Alternatively, you can find inventory reporting in your tool of choice.

Summarize the quantity and types of devices, noting any dated gear or inconsistencies with makes and models. Include a screenshot of your findings to help illustrate needs to your clients.

Finally, point out possible deficiencies, but don’t provide a recommendation just yet. You’ll do that in the last section of the report.

Firmware and software versions

Next you’ll assess which versions of software and firmware your client is using. Navigate to page six of the network assessment report template. 

If you’re using Auvik, go to your Home Dashboard and click Export. Open the file and go to the Devices sheet. Select columns B, H, I, and J.

When you’ve collected the data, summarize your client’s standardization of firmware, noting any inconsistencies and dated versions. Once again, include a screenshot of your findings.

Point out possible deficiencies, but hold off on providing recommendations.

Architecture

On page seven of the network assessment report template, you’ll have an opportunity to evaluate your client’s network architecture.

Export your choice of map from your network management software’s dashboard. If you’re using Auvik, we like the Network Elements Only view, but you may want to show other important areas of the network, depending on your client and their environment. Paste the map into the report template, then describe the network architecture in writing.

If relevant, you could also highlight one or more important connections.

Performance

Pages nine and 10 of the template highlight network performance, including internet utilization and network device utilization.

Internet utilization

Take a screenshot of your client’s internet utilization from the past week and summarize their bandwidth utilization, noting any peaks and how their average compares to their total available bandwidth. Paste the screenshot into the report template.

To access utilization information in Auvik, go to Documentation > Reports > Network Device > Utilization report. Set the calendar view to Past Week.

Point out potential deficiencies, but don’t provide any recommendations yet.

Network device utilization

Next, generate a network device utilization report for the past week. Then, filter for network elements and take a screenshot. Paste the screenshot into the report template. 

To access information on network device utilization in Auvik go to Documentation > Reports > Network Device Utilization report. Set the calendar view to Past Week. Alternatively, you could export the report by going to the Network Devices tab and pulling the relevant details.

Summarize the uptime percentage, what the throughput is compared to the total available throughput on the devices, and the device health metrics like CPU, storage, and memory utilization. 

As per usual, identify possible problems, but don’t provide recommendations just yet.

Misconfigurations

On page 11, you’ll lay out your client’s network’s misconfigurations. 

Check your network tool’s misconfiguration alerts for the time period for which you’re collecting information. Summarize these alerts, and their potential impact to the client. Include screenshots of these alerts in the report as proof. 

To access this information in Auvik, review informational alerts over the past week, or for whatever interval the Collector has been running.

Point out shortcomings, but don’t explain how to resolve them yet.

Page 13 is home to the security section of the network assessment document, which consists of a subsection on SNMP credentials and another on passwords. Here’s how to complete each one.

SNMP credentials

Access your client’s SNMP credentials via your network management software of choice. Take a screenshot of your findings to include in the report.

If using Auvik, navigate to Discovery, Manage Credentials, and then SNMP Credentials.

Next, summarize the credentials network devices are using. Point out any default credentials or credential reuse that may impact the security posture of the network, but don’t provide recommendations.

Compile a list of your client’s login credentials and paste them in the “Passwords” section of your network assessment report. Summarize the credentials in use across the environment and include a screenshot of the report as proof.

To find out details about your client’s password security in Auvik, go to Discovery, Manage Credentials, and then Login Credentials and take a screenshot. 

Point out any default credentials or credential reuse that may impact the security posture of the network, but don’t provide a resolution just yet (hold off just a little bit longer!).

After completing the passwords section, it’s time to move on to the solutions-focused portion of the network assessment report, starting with remediations taken. 

Remediation actions taken

On page 15, list anything you’ve already done to remedy the problems uncovered by the report. Focus on quick fixes for these actions. 

Recommendations

For all other issues, list what you recommend should be done about them on page 15.

We suggest listing these recommendations in order of priority and coding them as such. We’ve used red to indicate high-priority issues, orange for medium-priority problems, and yellow for low-priority vulnerabilities.

Closing page

End the report with your company’s information. If you’re sharing the report digitally instead of in print, hyperlink your logo to your website, make that phone number a clickable link, and configure your address to open Google Maps to turn your report into a sales tool.

Et voila! Now you have a network assessment report ready to be sent to your clients.

Final thoughts on network assessment reports

A network assessment report template helps you present the findings of a network assessment to your clients in an organized, easy-to-understand way. By following our template and using Auvik, you can conduct a network assessment and write a corresponding report in under an hour. 

Download the network assessment report template today. 

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Cloud vs On Premise: Comparison Chart for Network Management

How to evaluate your current network management solution, what’s your shadow it risk factor.

• The impact shadow IT has on an organization
• How to evaluate tools
• Tips on security
• A quiz to help you determine the severity of shadow IT in your org
• Solutions to solve these problems

Red Hat Research Quarterly

November 2021, programmable networking project reports on its first year of progress.

Toke Høiland-Jørgensen

about the author

Toke Høiland-Jørgensen is a Principal Kernel Engineer working on networking and BPF. He holds a PhD on the topic of network performance and bufferbloat.

Article featured in

In this issue

The need for constant-time cryptography

The elastic bare metal cloud is here.

Gagan Kumar

Creating a Linux-based unikernel

Gordon haff, making machine learning accessible across disciplines.

From the Director

Let’s help more programmers get into the groove

Red hat collaboratory at boston university granting major awards, shaun strohmer, test case prioritization: towards high-reliability continuous integration.

Ilya Kolchinsky

Opening the doors of tech: why diversity is critical to the future of computing

Matej Hrušovský

How COVID made our world smaller

Researchers from Red Hat and Karlstad University, Sweden, have recently finished their first year of work on enhancing the performance of the eXpress Data Path (XDP), a data path integrated into the Linux kernel that permits flexible programmable networking. The group’s year one report, “Building the next generation of programmable networking—powered by Linux,” was released September 10, 2021. 

Two problems, two goals

Given the potentially wide scope for the project, researchers prioritized two areas: enhancing XDP with queuing capabilities and using BPF/XDP for efficient latency monitoring.

While XDP excels in forwarding packets, it has no mechanism for queuing or reordering of packets and cannot implement traffic scheduling policies. To remedy this, the researchers are experimenting with ways of adding programmable packet scheduling to XDP. The goal is to allow programmers to define their packet schedulers using BPF while benefiting from the XDP fast data path.

Currently the team is prototyping the Linux BPF queueing implementation and implementing a prototyping framework to execute different scheduling algorithms quickly and try different API constructs. Using the framework, they will continue to experiment with different ways of constructing packet scheduling algorithms and improve their ease of use. The report illustrates the new packet design scheduling framework, using BPF hooks for enqueue, dequeue, and timer hooks.

The researchers are also exploring ways to employ BPF/XDP for latency monitoring. If successful, BPF could alleviate several problems involved in measuring latency using tools like ping: additional network overhead, lack of scalability, and a limited view of possible latency causes. Because using passive ping (pping) can mitigate some of those issues, researchers developed an implementation of pping using BPF (e-pping). Initial results detailed in the report suggest that e-pping introduces negligible CPU overhead.

About the project

Professor Brunstrom was interviewed for the August 2021 issue of RHRQ; see “ The right idea at the right time: networking researchers use open source for real-world results .”

The XDP project is a collaborative effort with participants from multiple organizations.

The core project team includes:

• Red Hat engineers Toke Høiland-Jørgensen and Jesper Dangaard Brouer
• Karlstad University professors Anna Brunstrom and Per Hurtig
• PhD students Freysteinn Alfredsson and Simon Sundberg

Staff members from Red Hat and Karlstad, as well as representatives from Ericsson, have also participated in some meetings. Researchers plan to make results available as open access, open source software and open data.

Those interested in reviewing the project and providing comments are encouraged to do so, either by going to the GitHub repository or by emailing [email protected] .

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How to write a project report: [templates + guide] 

Writing a project report is an essential but often overlooked contributor to your project’s health.  However, without the use of automation and templates, it can be a little time-consuming to collect and organize the relevant data that the project generates.

In this post, we’ll explore the basics of project reporting. We’ve included some useful templates and tips to create clear and helpful project reports in less time.

If you want to start creating better project reports using monday.com, sign up today.

What is a project report?

A project report is a document where you share details about different areas of your project. Depending on the report type , your audience, and your intention, the details you showcase might differ.

Project reports can be broken down by time— daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly— or a number of other factors like risk, budget, and project management style. Bottom line? They simplify the process of gathering and disseminating information about key information on the project. For instance, a typical report might include:

• Resources you’ve used so far
• How project time is being spent
• How you’re doing against key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Workload and team availability

What is the purpose of project reporting?

Reporting gives you, your team, and your stakeholders the ability to track project progress against the original plan. The main goal of a project report is to improve decision-making, to help you make sense of your project data, and decide what your next steps should be. This in turn can impact your budget, timeliness, and project success.

It also plays a vital role in your stakeholder engagement strategy, as it keeps everyone informed on the progress of projects they’re interested in. Those are just a few of the reasons why project reporting has become the most common activity among PMOs (Project Management Offices).

( Image Source )

5 steps to create a useful project report

Project reports can be useful – or they can end up as a 20-page PDF that lives in a drawer somewhere. To put together a report that your project stakeholders can use to gain insights, make decisions and optimize processes, take the following systematic approach to writing your project reports:

1. Define the purpose and scope: Clearly establish the goals, objectives, target audience, and information needs of your project report. 2. Gather and organize data: Collect and organize all relevant data, ensuring its accuracy and reliability. 3. Structure and outline: Create a clear and logical structure for your report and outline the key points you want to cover. 4. Present information effectively: Use clear and concise language and visual aids like graphs or charts to present the information in an easily understandable, visually appealing manner. 5. Review and revise: Proofread your report for any errors or inconsistencies, ensure that it addresses the defined purpose and scope, and revise as necessary to improve clarity.

The different types of project management reports [with templates]

You can split project reports into different types and categories. Here are five different types of project mangement reports, with monday.com templates you can customize for your unique project and team set-up.

1. Project status report

Probably the most frequently used, a project status report offers a general overview of the current status of your projects. A project status report answers the question: “How likely is it that we’ll complete this project on time without overrunning costs?”

These reports analyze whether you’re meeting project goals and key performance indicators. With our single project template , creating a status report is easier than ever.

2. Resource workload report

Resource workload reports help you visualize what your team’s working on, when they’re working on it, and how much work is left. These also reports help you understand how your assets are being used and make sure your actions are aligned with the overall objective.

Our resource management template helps you organize all your assets, locations, and people into one place and track every action with accuracy. You can also manage your resource allocation initiatives and make sure you don’t assign the same resource twice in multiple tasks.

3. Portfolio report

Portfolio reports take a look at all your projects and consolidate all the data into a single document. These reports capture high-level milestones, status, progress, and highlights of your portfolio strategy.

With our portfolio management template , you can track unlimited projects on a single board and get a quick snapshot of their health and profitability.

4. Task list/Time-tracking report

Time-tracking reports, also known as timesheets, help you measure how your team is spending their time and spot potential bottlenecks.

With our team task list template , you can bring in your entire organization, assign tasks to peers, track time and measure the project progress at a glance.

5. Expense report

A project might seem healthy – until everyone starts reporting expenses  at the end of the time period. With our expense tracking template , you can proactively manage your cash flow regardless of your accounting skills (or lack thereof!)

Want to try out these templates – and much more? Check out monday.com today.

FAQs about Project Reports

What are the benefits of a project report.

A project report provides a comprehensive overview of a project’s objectives, progress, and outcomes, serving as a valuable documentation and communication tool. It allows stakeholders to assess your project’s effectiveness, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions based on reliable data.

What are the main types of project reports?

The most commonly used types of project reports include:

• Progress reports
• Resource management reports
• Project portfolio reports
• Time-tracking reports
• Evaluation reports
• Final reports

What are the main components of a project report?

This will depend on the project and the type of report you’re using, but project reports might include:

• Project objective
• Project scope
• Project milestones
• Project expenses or budget
• Project schedule and timeline
• Project progress
• Resource management
• Risk assessment
• Stakeholder communication
• Financial summary

How to create insightful project reports with monday.com

monday.com makes it easy to create effective project reports. Try it for yourself and see:

Here’s why monday.com can make your project reporting better:

• Track project data in a centralized location, so you have all the information you need to make useful reports.
• Use monday.com’s customized visualization tools to visualize and summarize project data the way you want to see it.
• Set up dashboards to see all of your projects at a glance.
• Take advantage of monday.com’s reporting functionality . You can choose between built-in report templates or customized reports if you have more specific requirements.
• Share your reports with project stakeholders , team members, or even clients directly from monday.com.
• Our embedded communication tools let you collaborate on your reports in real-time, gather feedback, and address any questions or concerns.

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1000 Projects

Free BTech BE Projects | MTech ME Projects | MCA Projects | MBA Projects

Category: Networking Projects

Computer science students can search for list of Networking Projects topics and ideas with source code and project report for free download. This category consists of Networking Projects for CSE,Networking Projects PPT, Networking projects in java,Networking projects topics for final year students. Networking projects available here are implemented in java which are useful for IT and ece students.

Banking Network Design MCA Project Report

OBJECTIVES & GOALS

• It provides support to various applications of banking
• This Network will let various users of the bank and their employees connect to the main Server.
• The objective only authorized user to access Network including all servers and network devices.
• Provide greater speed & reduce time consumption.
• It provides 99.99% of uptime of Network.
• Allocate bandwidth to servers accordingly by using QoS.
• The proposed Network will be user-friendly so that even a beginner can troubleshoot any issue easily.

The H/W used for developing this Network entitled Banking Network Design is as follows:-

• L2 and L3 Switches
• WIC Cards, S/T Cards and various modules for routers and switches.
• Very small aperture terminal(VSAT)
• Various types of cables for interconnecting Network Devices.
• Servers according to Customers requirements.

Network Overview

The Network design starts from the point of topology. This will include defining the layers and defining the functionality of each layer. The main aspect of dividing the network into layers is to incorporate the functions based on the layered structure and design the connectivity methods and high availability techniques at each layer. It also helps in distribution and control of network functionality.

The aim of the network is to provide highly available and scalable environment for collocation of Internet, Intranet and Extranet services, and applications. It providing high-speed access to data, voice and internet-based applications. The network is planned such that it will provide the necessary backbone connectivity between the different offices to ensure that the network becomes an enabler for business plans.

The design should be in such a way that there will be no single points of failure and should be capable of achieving fast and predictable convergence times. The design should also address the ease of scalability by increasing the port density in the switches. This Low-Level Design has been made in accordance with Cisco’s existing best-practice recommendations. The foundation of the design stems from Cisco’s standard ‘Multilayer Network Design’ model.

Future Scope

There is a vast future scope of this Network. This Design can be improved and can be used by various banks. If the limitations present in this Design are removed then, this Network will become very reliable and provide 100% uptime.

We can easily implement any changes to the Network Design as we are using the latest protocol like Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) in our network which is having attributes to easily divert or control the flow of data and QOS which can be used to allocate bandwidth to servers accordingly.

LIMITATIONS

• Any unreported/ undetected Bugs in standard software’s, or tools
• Any changes in Application Software features
• Older versions are incompatible with current features
• Lease line uptime depends on a particular Service Provider.
• This Network is limited by the state of technology and functionality of software tools or products deployed.
• Third-party IOS integration will be carried out on the best-effort basis.
• All hardware devices upgrades, hardware re-deployments, and policy changes shall be done after the mutual consent of the customer, based on the impact it would have on the overall security situation and performance of the network.
• Security can be implemented in a better way.

Secure Data Retrieval for Decentralized Disruption-Tolerant Military Networks NS2 Project

Network desktop manager java project.

Network is to connect two or more computers together with the ability to communicate with each other. Networking is to link two or more computing devices together for the purpose of sharing data.

It provides design, programming, development and operational support for LANs, WANs and other networks. A local area network (LAN) is a group of computers and associated devices that share a common communications line or wireless link.

Desktop Manager can assess the configurations of desktops and determine if they have received the proper updates — a task that is helpful to ensure all desktops are operating properly and securely. Network Desktop Manager manages desktop icons, background image and media message on LAN.

It controls the Desktops within the network and keep desktops clean and tidy. It even allows to add own Media message (video, image or HTML) that can be displayed on the remote Desktops within the network.

Our proposed project is Network Desktop Manager which provides the complete control on the remote desktop. When ever the administrator wants to operate the remote system this application provides the requested host desktop to the administrator so that he/she can operate the remote system directly with the system desktop. It also provides some of the features like chatting, desktop locking, desktop sharing, and port scanning.

1. Desktop Sharing

Administrator can directly access the remote system by sharing the requested system desktop. Desktop Sharing is a server application that allows to share current session with a user on another machine, who can use a client to view or even control the desktop. Desktop Sharing lets users call a remote computer to access its shared desktop and applications.With the Desktop sharing we can operate our office computer from our home or viceversa.

2. Desktop locking and unlocking

Desktop locking and unlocking is a utility provided by the Network Desktop Manager to lock and unlock the remote desk to prevent others from accessing the system.Desktop Lock is a computer security protection and access control software product, we can use it to lock computer to prevent people from accessing your private documents and resources. When the computer being locked by Desktop Lock, none can access your documents, browse your computer, or use programs on locked system.

3. Messaging

Administrator can communicate with the remote systems that are connected With in the local network administrator can communicate publicly or privately.

Messaging is nothing but passing data to and from applications over the network which makes the synchronisation of data simple. Messaging allows users across the network to exchange data in real time. Most commonly, these data consist of typed conversations, but the power of the system lies in its ability to pass other data as well. This could be in the form of audio or video or, as will be presented here, other text data that will allow the two chatting parties to retrieve the same data base record by sending a primary key or keys from one to the other.

4. IP Port Scanning

If administrator wants to know the information about how many ports are working on the specified system and what is the port number allotted for the service, how many ports are closed, and how many are open.IP Port Scanner allows for testing whether a remote computer is alive with UDP and testing whether a TCP port is being listened with two types CONNECTS and SYN. IP Port Scanner reverse lookup IP address into hostname and read responses from connected TCP Port.

Software Requirements :

Platform : JAVA using Swings

Computer Network Project

The purpose of this Computer Network-Project is to implement a simplified web system. The system consists of three programs, the DNS server program, the Web server program, and the client program. The client program consists of two parts, a browser simulator and a client program for system testing.

Domain Name Server

In Internet, packets are routed based on the 32-bit destination IP addresses. However, these numerical addresses are inconvenient for users and applications. Instead, hostnames that consist of strings separated by periods are used. Using hostnames instead of IP addresses has another advantage, namely, transparency. For example, a Web site IP address may change if a different company is hosting the content, but the hostname can remain the same. The translation of hostnames into IP addresses and vice versa is coordinated by the domain name system (DNS). DNS is a hierarchical name space that can be represented by a tree (see the following Figure). The root of the tree is an unnamed node. The first layer of the tree contains the top-level domains. The second-level domain names are given to individual

companies, institutions, and/or organizations. Various levels of subdomains further divide a domain. DNS is a distributed database that consists of a hierarchical set of DNS servers. More specifically, there is a DNS server associated with each node at the root, top-level, and second-level domains. The DNS servers for the second-level domains serve both

iterative and recursive DNS requests. For example, a client in local domain may query its local DNS server (say S ) for a hostname “www.yahoo.com” using a recursive request. S will search its cache (not the mapping table) for a match. If such match does not exist, then it sends a query to the root DNS server to get the IP address of the DNS of the “com” domain. Then S queries “com” domain DNS to get the IP address of the DNS of the “yahoo.com” domain. Finally, S queries the “yahoo.com” domain DNS to get the IP address of “www.yahoo.com”. After getting the mapping, S adds the entry to its cache for future accesses. Actually, if S already has a cached entry for “com” domain DNS server, then there is no need to go to the root DNS server.

In the Web system, a client (browser) sends a Web access request to a Web server to access a web page. The Web server, in turn, receives the request, parses it to identify the file to be accessed, and transfers the file to the client (or sends back an error message if the request is not correct or the file it accesses does not exist). A Web access request is specified by a URL and HTTP protocol is used for the handshake between the client and the server. A URL consists of two parts, a host name and a file name. The host name is the name of the Web server and the file name is the Web page to be accessed. When a browser gets a URL, it separates the URL into host name and file name. It sends the host name to DNS server to obtain the corresponding IP address of the Web server. Then, it sends the file name to the

Web server with the IP address returned from the DNS server. Subsequently, it receives the response from the Web server and displays the returned content or error message.

In an older version of a web server program, a TCP connection is opened to accept the client connection requests. When a connection request is accepted, the server spawns a thread to receive the subsequent HTTP requests, process them, and send back the responses. This approach incurs high overhead for thread creation and disposal. Thus, new Web server programs use thread pools to handle client requests. A thread pool consists of multiple threads that are created up front. When a user requests for connection, an idle thread is chosen to establish the connection with the user and process subsequent requests. The

number of threads in the thread pool can expand and shrink, depending on the load of the system. For a Web site with high hit rate, one Web server may not be sufficient to handle all the client accesses. Multiple Web Servers are frequently used to share the load. However, a mechanism is needed to allow the client to transparently connect to the web server with low load. In other words, the same URL should be used for the access no matter whether the Web server is replicated. There are several methods that are commonly used for Web server load sharing. Here we introduce the DNS-based load sharing. The DNS server is used to direct the client to different Web servers. In this approach, the DNS server can map one hostname to multiple IP addresses, where each IP corresponds to one of the replicated Web servers. DNS

server can use round robin policy to select the IP address to return to the client. Some DNS servers can probe the servers to obtain server load information and, based on the load information, selects an appropriate IP address to return to the client.

• The client program simulates a browser.
• read in a URL;
• get the hostname h and file name f from r ;
• if h is not the same as the hostname of the previous request then
• send a message to close the previous connection;
• send a query to its local DNS server to get the IP address for h ;
• establish a connection to h ;
• send a request to h to get file f ;
• print the file f ;
• until being killed;  

Your client program should provide a browser-like interface. The interface should allow users to input the URL r from standard input. Each input line consists of a URL and a sleep time. To simplify the parsing process, we define fixed formats for hostnames and file names. We assume that each hostname always consists of 3 segments separated by periods, the name of the host, the second-level domain name, and the top-level domain name. The host name and the second-level and top-level domain names are strings of 3 letters. We also assume a flat file system, i.e., no directories. Each file name contains only a string of 4 letters followed by “.htm” extension. The entire URL, thus, is a string of 20 characters. After receiving

the requested file, the client program (browser) should display the HTML file (similar to a browser). The client program may send multiple requests along the same connection if consecutive requests are for the same host (e.g., fetching multiple objects in a web page). When a request needs to be sent to a different host, then the client should send a closing message to close the connection established with the previous host. The message formats for the DNS requests and the Web requests will be discussed in the later sections.

Your client program needs to know the IP address and port number of its local DNS server. These are given in an input file which will be discussed in the next subsection.  

The basic DNS server simply receives DNS queries from clients, performs name resolution, and responds to the clients. You need to implement the DNS servers to process DNS requests. In your implementation, you only need to consider mapping hostnames to IP addresses, not vise versa. Though actual DNS has a fixed port number, we will have to use different port numbers for different DNSs so that multiple DNSs can be simulated by one single processor. Thus, the mapping should include port number as well. Also, we only consider three levels in the domain hierarchy, including the root, top level, and second level. A mapping table should be maintained for all DNS servers in order to process iterative DNS requests. For the second-level domain DNS, you need to also maintain a cache for name resolution for recursive DNS

queries. UDP protocol should be used for DNS communication. Each DNS server creates a UDP socket to receive requests from clients and another UDP socket to send responses to clients. Each DNS request contains the full host/domain name string. The string should contain 11 bytes. We add a blank at the end to pad the string to 12 bytes. Thus, the request message is of 12 characters. The DNS server at different levels simply extracts the partial string that represents the domain name it can serve and finds the mapping. Each

DNS response contains 4 fields:

• <host/domain name (12 bytes)>
• <DNS level (4 bytes)>
• <IP address (16 bytes)>
• <port number (8 bytes)>

The DNS level specifies the level of the DNS in the hierarchy the response is from. It contains 4 characters, the first 3 characters are blanks and the 4th character is the actual level, where 0 represents the root level, 1 represents the top level, and 2 represents the second level. The IP address will always be a 16 byte character string. If the actual IP address string is shorter than 16 characters, the remaining bytes are filled by blanks. The port number and is converted to text format with he corresponding sizes. In total, each DNS response, no matter which level it is from, should contain 52 characters.

We use thread pool concept to implement the Web server program. When a Web server starts, it creates N threads. Then the server listens to a TCP port. When a connection request comes, the server selects an idle thread from the thread pool and let the selected thread accept the connection and process the requests. Since the load of the system changes, the thread pool size should adapt accordingly. We create another thread to perform thread pool maintenance.

The request message from the client contains the client id (4 characters, converted from the integer value) followed by a file name. As discussed previously, the file name is a string of 8 characters, including 4 letters and the “.htm” extension. Overall, each web server request contains 12 characters.

At the Web server site, the Web files are located in one directory. The directory name will be discussed later. When the Web server receives a request message containing the file name, it appends the directory name and fetches the corresponding file. It then sends the file content through the same connection to the client. The response message starts with the file size and followed by the file content. The file size is an integer in text representation and it uses 12 bytes. If the file does not exist, then the value in the response should be all 0’s, indicating an error. The connection from the client does not close till the client close the connection.

Network Traffic Monitoring & windows Remote Manager

In a Network, LAN/WAN, maintaining the operating system remotely is a crucial job for an administrator.

Our proposed project is a remote desktop application which is providing remote service to its entire client over the network and gives solution to the network administrator to monitor the Network Traffic which is provided at the server side and the administrator can build firewall for LAN/WAN by providing some rules.

It acts as a network administrator to its client by providing remote services like Remote Chat, Windows Explorer, Remote Desktop, Task Manager and Control Panel. Network Traffic Monitoring lists all the network connections along with IP Address of local / remote machines with port numbers , shows the destination IP address and its port number , displays all the process, even that are not visible in Task Manager and also communicates with the computers on a network.

RemoteChat is used to communicate with the specified host in the network.Windows Explorer is used to explorer the network files.Remote Desktop captures the desktop of a specified host in the network.Task Manager provides information about programs and processes running on remote computer Finally if we don’t want any program we can stop that from getting executed in the machine by adding the program name in the Blocked program list.

• Remote Chat
• Windows Explorer
• Remote Desktop
• Task Manager
• Control Panel

Monitoring:

Monitoring shows the history of incoming and outgoing packets in a network. It also shows destination IP address and its port number, besides that we can see the statistic of a network.

Remote Chat:

Remote Chat module provides communication with the specified host in the network.Chat is designed for real-time, unstructured conversations with users who are signed on to the site at the same time. Remote chat is an application that facilitates communication between different hosts on the same local area network. It does not require a central server and uses very little bandwidth by taking advantage of a lightweight protocol and UDP packets.

Windows Explorer:

Windows Explorer module is used to manage the files of a specified host in the network.Windows Explorer is an application that provides detailed information about our files, folders, and drives. We can use it to see how our files are organized and to copy, move, and rename files, as well as perform other tasks pertaining to files, folders, and drives.

Remote Desktop:

Remote Desktop module captures the desktop of a specified host in the network.With Remote Desktop we can have access to a Windows session that is running on our computer when we are at another computer. This means, for example, that we can connect to our work computer from home and have access to all of our applications, files, and network resources as though we were in front of our computer at work. We can leave programs running at work and when we get home,we can see our desktop at work displayed on our home computer, with the same programs running.

Task Manager:

Task Manager module provides information about programs and processes running on remote computer.it is providing remote operations like kill task and refresh list.Task Manager provides information about programs and processes running on our computer. It also displays the most commonly used performance measures for processes.

Control Panel:

Control Panel module provides remote operations such as remote lock system, remote logoff, remote restart, remote shutdown, getting system information , getting username getting login time it request arrives from client . First it parses the request and provides service to its corresponding client. It is also providing some fun operations such as swap mouse button , clip mouse cursor, crazy mouse , normal mouse , screen saver , set mouse Dbl click speed , open CD door , run game , run paint , run notepad.

Latest Java Project on Data Security Using Honey Pot System with Project Report

Introduction to data security using honey pot system project:.

In order to provide a support to the defensive network security posture the recent concept of data security using honeypot system is implemented and it is widely accepted by people.

This project has various features that along with data gathering of the intelligence enable to understand the attacker more profoundly.

It also helps to know about the kind of ammunition’s being used by the attackers well as the results of the unauthorized attacks for the measures of the prosecution. 

The already existing systems need the intrusion signatures as well as brief information about the abnormal and normal activities. Using machine learning techniques it is quite difficult to identify the abnormalities.

These system activity based on general rules and models that can be used by the system to detect intrusions, compromising the system’s reliability. The earlier works of intrusion detections aim at single source generated activities.

It results in various undetected intrusions. In the existing system, an intruder can enter and access the network easily. In order to secure the system, it is important to prevent the entry of the intruder. 

The ticketing authority is the new concept of the proposed plan and according to this plan, the clients will have to get tickets from the ticketing authority to access the network resources.

This method is proposed in order to keep a check on the vulnerable activities. It will keep a check on the unauthenticated clients and will also secure the networking system.

In this method, the back end server will compare the client’s permission and the requested operation, whether it should be allowed or not. If they find any kind of discrepancy between the requests operations and the permission then they will transfer it to the honeypot for filtration.

This new method can protect the system and also prevent unscrupulous activities.

CSE Mini Networking Project on Prevention of Congestion Collapse

Introduction to networking project on prevention of congestion collapse:.

One of the most important things that is to be kept in mind while dealing with the virtual world is that, every service, protocol and algorithm that is introduced in the internet must essentially scale well. This is usually termed as a scalability argument.

An effect of this scalability argument is that, in order to retain the scalability, the level of complexities in the algorithms must be pushed to the borders, in every possible case. This corollary is known as the end to end argument. 

Thus the presence of a network border patrol is essential in the virtual world, as it looks forward to prevent any sort of congestion collapse and also helps in the promotion of fairness in the virtual world.

This mechanism of the network border patrol has been set up so that the problems of congestion collapse due to packets that remain undelivered and uneven distribution of bandwidth among the traffic can be corrected and dealt with.

What the Network Border Patrol looks forward to do is necessitates a feedback among routers so as to identify and detect and control unresponsive flow of traffic, just at the border of the network.

In this way, once they are detected at the border, they are not able to enter the network and thus will have no scope to cause any congestion. 

There are various modules that this mechanism follows: 

Source module whose job is to send to the Ingress router the packets.

Ingress Router Module which helps to control the rate of flow of every packet entering the network.

Router Module is the one that receives the packet sent by the Ingress router, and then again forwards it to Egress router.

Egress Router Module is one that determines how quickly each packet is leaving the network.

Destination Module receives and ultimately stores the data sent by the Egress router.

  Download   CSE Mini Networking Project on Prevention of Congestion Collapse .

CSE Networking Project Topic on Network Border Patrol with Project Report

The presence of the network border patrol is essential in the virtual world, as it looks forward to prevent any sort of congestion collapse and also helps in the promotion of fairness in the virtual world.

One of the most important things that is to be kept in mind while dealing with the virtual world is that, every service, protocol and algorithm that is introduced in the internet must essentially scale well. This is usually termed as a sociability argument.

An effect of this scalability argument is that, in order to retain the scalability, the level of complexities in the algorithms must be pushed to the borders, in every possible case.

This corollary is known as the end to end argument. 

One of the best examples of this argument is the TCP congestion control that is usually attained by algorithms, which are employed only at the end systems. But this too has limitations, as TCP comes with the cons of the end to end argument.

Because TCP follows the end to end congestion control very rigidly, two of the most common problems that the internet face are congestion collapse due to packets that remain undelivered and uneven distribution of bandwidth among the traffic. 

To elaborate on the first problem, what happens is that congestion collapse occurs because the bandwidth is continuously utilized by those packets that are dropped before hand and hence do not reach their destination.

The main reason for this collapse is the unresponsive flow, that has become so very popular over the internet, especially in the applications that uses both video and audio.

The second problem also rises because of unresponsive flows. The TCP flow, which is an adaptive flow, has the power to react to congestion very fast; they minimize their rate of transmission, hence the distribution of bandwidth ends up being uneven. 

Download   CSE Networking Project Topic on Network Border Patrol with Project Report.

CSE Project for B.tech on Network Administrator Tool with Project Report

Introduction to network administrator tool with project:.

The network administrator tool has been developed in order to provide remote service to all the clients of the administrator that belong to the same network.

This tool has the ability to act as a network administrator to all the clients and can provide services remotely like remote log off, remote shut down, remote chatting, remote file transfer and remote sharing of desktop.

Below are the characteristics, and is expanded on them for everyone to understand. 

Remote Control  

The remote control is made use of for remote operations with the help of an electronic device.

With the help of this characteristic of remote control, operations can be performed remotely, like shutdown and log off from the computers, provided these requests come from the clients.

  Remote File Transfer  

With the help of this feature, files can be transferred from the server to the computer of the client who requests the file. What is done is at first the client sends a request for the file, and then the server recognizes the name of the file.

If the file is present in the server then it will be able to transfer a copy to the client’s computer, else it will display the message – file not found. 

Remote Desktop Sharing  

Making use of the remote desktop sharing, the administrator is given the power to enter the windows desktop, remotely that is located within the network.

What is best about this feature is that can enter the network, without needing a native client. What this feature enables one to do is gain access to the office computer from home and vice-versa. 

Remote Messaging  

This feature makes communication possible, between various hosts, provided they lie within the same LAN.

This allows the users to exchange messages in real time, without any delay. It basically mean passing of data between the users over the network. 

Download   CSE Project for B.tech on Network Administrator Tool with Project Report.

Network Administration Tool Final Year Project Report

Introduction to network administration tool project:.

Administrators have the most important tasks, and this is why to make their jobs easy, network administrative tool has been introduced, which is a software package.

It is with the help of this tool, the administrator will be able to gain a full control of the software and also oversee the software’s entry to network resources.

Other than this, the tool will also handle various files and will also be able to help during the process of execution and maintain software on the computers of clients.

This network administrative toll will further make things easy by minimizing the provision of direct support to all its network users with the aid of its unique features. 

The unique features of the network administrative tool are as follows: 

• This feature can be used by the administrator very easily, because of the fact that it is made up with a GUI that is considered very user friendly.
• This tool can support deployment of software on the computer of the client, remotely.
• The addition of the client machines to the network can now be done easily and simply, with its help
• The task performed by the tool on the computer of the client is done silently and quietly
• The installation or un-installation of this software can be done with ease.
• This software also aims to minimize the support of the direct user.
• It also has the ability to control, only from a single console the system operations
• It has the power to maintain and look after other software installed in the computer
• Also adding other new features to the tool can be done simply 

The main aim is to try and organize the systems, only from one server, that is centrally located, which is in turn connected to a network, so that it can perform its daily activities.

Download   Network Administration Tool Final Year Project Report.

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Accelerate Your Business Performance With Modern IT Reports

Table of Contents

1) What Is An IT Report?

2) Why Do You Need An IT Report?

3) What Are The Advantages of IT Reporting?

4) IT Report Templates

5) Best Practices In IT Reporting

6) What To Look For In IT Reporting Software

7) IT Reporting Mistakes To Avoid

8) Real-life Applications IT Dashboard Reporting

In the modern age, your IT department is a part of your business’s core nerve center. Without it, your organization would fall apart pretty quickly.

But, akin to many other industries, the information technology sector faces the age-old issue of producing IT reports that boost success by helping to maximize value from a tidal wave of digital data. While integral to organizational success and development, IT reporting could be considered a fruitless exercise without the ability to gain actionable insights from your most important insights.

As head of IT, you may have heard the question, “How many support tickets did we get that month? And how fast were they resolved?” Without the capacity to answer such questions, your ability to support your IT department successfully will be hindered.

But in this digital age, dynamic modern IT reports created with a state-of-the-art online reporting tool are here to help you provide viable answers to a host of burning departmental questions. The IT management report of today will help you make more informed, more powerful decisions, do your job effectively, and develop exciting new growth strategies.

To put the power of digital data reporting into perspective, we’ll explore the role of IT reports, its numerous benefits, and a mix of real-life examples.

Let’s get started!

What Is An IT Report?

An IT report compiles an ensemble of IT KPIs tracked over a certain period to assess various situations related to project management, helpdesk issues such as ticket status and their resolution, or more financial-focused costs and revenue stats, among others.

Regardless of their nature, they deliver value to their readers and are supposedly impactful. They have to align with the company’s strategic objectives and priorities. Therefore, their realization needs to be thought out. The purpose is not to track every statistic possible, as you risk being drowned in data and losing focus.

By understanding your core business goals and selecting the right key performance indicator ( KPI ) and metrics for your specific needs, you can use an information technology report sample to visualize your most valuable metrics at a glance, developing initiatives and making pivotal decisions swiftly and confidently. Using a modern dashboard creator , each report is easily visualized and provides advanced interactivity possibilities to explore and generate insights.

Information technology reports are the interactive eyes that help your department run more smoothly, cohesively, and successfully. They are powerful tools that serve different purposes and analytical scenarios in the IT department. Below, you’ll find the most common types of IT reports. 

• Device Report: Also known as endpoint report, it provides insights into the performance of all machines working in the company. It is an important report as it helps discover, monitor, and troubleshoot all devices to ensure everything works as it should. For big corporations with many employees and devices, tracking this data and maximizing performance is of utmost importance. 
• Downtime Report: One of the most critical tasks the IT department needs to take care of is ensuring systems are running smoothly. This means identifying and solving any downtime, including website outages, network failure, and CRM downtime, among others. The downtime report provides the necessary knowledge to understand these issues, their effect on the business, how long it took to identify and solve them, and the next steps. In time, tracking this data will also help IT to identify recurring issues and implement preventive measures. 
• IT Backlog Report : The word “backlog” refers to accumulated or uncompleted work. In IT, it refers to a high number of service tickets being opened or unresolved. This can indicate several things, including inefficiencies in ticket management or a lack of employees to cover the demand. A backlog report is a great tool to find the reasons behind it and implement corrective measures. It helps the IT department to rectify bottlenecks and ensure every employee or user is getting the help they need.     
• Security Report: Security is one of the most pressing issues for businesses of all sizes today. As the number of attacks and breaches increases, the need to implement and evaluate security measures is fundamental. That is the value of a security report. These tools provide a 360-view into all aspects related to cybersecurity, from common threats to time to detection and repair, phishing tests, and much more. They can also include predictive data to forecast and tackle an attack immediately. 
• Costs Report: IT needs to account for a budget like any area or department. The costs report details all expenses and costs from direct IT operations and valuable insights for cost optimization and resource allocation. It shows areas that could be improved to make the department financially efficient. 

These are just a few of the many types of IT reports businesses use daily. We will see some of these types in the examples section of the post, but first, we will look at why you need them. 

Why Do You Need An IT Report?

When setting up a business strategy for your IT department, you need to craft a vision, identify goals to achieve, and a clear path to getting there. IT reports are here to help you demonstrate at each stage of the way you stand and demonstrate the progress (or decline) accomplished so far – and the effect you have on that progress.

This is why it is highly important to report correctly. If your reporting does not align with the wider business objectives, you might drive the IT department – and sometimes even the rest of the business – further apart. Bad reports can also endanger the budget initially settled.

What Are The Advantages of IT Reporting?

IT reporting has many benefits. Not only does it let you assess the current state of activities to find out what is happening and where, but it also provides proof of it happening. Using IT analytics software is extremely useful in the matter: by gathering all your info in a single point of truth, you can easily analyze everything at once and create actionable IT dashboards . Thanks to their in-the-moment nature, you don’t need to struggle with permanent synchronization: all your data is always up-to-date. That is a considerable asset to understand easily the bits and bytes of your activity and turn those insights into informed business decisions.

IT dashboards, visualized through a professional online dashboard , come in handy because they give an idea of the current situation in a glimpse. Just like you would answer “I am a bit stressed” or “tired but happy” to someone asking how you feel, without giving them the blow-by-blow account of everything that happened throughout the week, a report gives a snapshot of the activities. It is a highly effective communication tool to grasp your team’s performance or collaborate with coworkers.

To drive home the message of why you need an interactive IT report template and digital dashboard solutions for your technical departments, here is a concise summary of the business-boosting benefits:

1. Improved decision-making: The intuitive visual nature of digital reports fosters swifter, more informed decision-making across all key aspects of your IT department. Not only will you be able to make better senior choices relating to your department, but by empowering other team members to analyze and drill down into important metrics and insights with ease, you will accelerate your success significantly.

2. Inclusivity: Expanding on decision-making, as these kinds of dashboards and reports serve up digestible data visualizations, members of your IT department will be able to use these solutions with ease, even under pressure . The graphical nature of such dashboards will also make it easy for you and your IT personnel to share insights with other departments effectively without any key data getting lost in translation .

3. Agility: As every modern IT report template is fully customizable and offers access to every insight, online data visualization , or KPI from a centralized location across many mobile devices, it’s possible to gain access to invaluable IT-based knowledge 24/7. As the IT department is the lifeblood of any modern organization, this level of agile access to key insights will increase productivity and increase response times to unforeseen issues or technical problems.

4. Better business intelligence (BI): By accessing past, real-time, and predictive data with modern BI tools , you will enhance your IT department’s business intelligence capabilities ten-fold – pushing you ahead of the pack in the process. These kinds of informational hubs are designed for growth and evolution, and by embracing them, you will be able to make your IT department stronger than you ever thought possible.

5. Improved productivity and accuracy: In business, it's critical to provide the right knowledge at the right time. Whether it's ad hoc reporting in question or strategical analysis and development, the team needs to have access to the right insights at any time. By utilizing advanced reports for IT processes, each team member can have access to data and immediately ask questions, share their findings, and create their own analysis. Moreover, by automating the delivery of insights on specific days of the week or month, productivity increases, and professionals can shift their focus from report creation to actionable insights.

6. Lower costs: Businesses need to lower their costs as much as possible, and by creating an IT service report template, you can easily adjust each metric presented and use it for any of your future reports. This will enable you to save time and, consequently, costs that would otherwise be lost in endless static reports and outdated information. Speed is critical, and modern solutions help to centralize all the data on a single point of access.

7. Confidence: Running an IT department is no easy feat. There are countless things to consider on a daily basis, not to mention long-term initiatives to focus on. With a modern tech report, you can take charge of your insights and improve departmental communication. In turn, this will give you greater direction, aptitude, and confidence.

IT Report Templates And Examples

As mentioned, technical-style reports are composed of a collection of KPIs aimed at analyzing specific parts of the IT department’s activities. Once you have defined what you want to measure, you can select the appropriate metrics and visualize them with an effective dashboard design .

These five IT report examples and their associated key performance indicators put the power of IT-based dashboards into a practical perspective.

Let’s start with our issue management IT report sample.

1. IT Issue Management Dashboard

This first template deals with technical issue management and is especially useful for IT leaders.

**click to enlarge**

This particular example indeed provides an overview of the overall problems happening in your system and lets everyone know what is happening and how often. The report displays the performance of 3 servers and tracks several metrics:

• the up- and downtime are expressed as a percentage and in minutes
• the types of issues that occurred, the downtime they provoked, and the effort needed to repair them
• the number of support employees per thousand end-users
• the percentages of unsolved tickets per support agent

These metrics will help identify whether the issues are effectively managed and if the technical performance is on track. The point is to keep the system performance well maintained, and such an IT operations report template can certainly help in the process. If you spot inefficiencies and higher numbers of issues, for example, from the DNS perspective or hardware failure, you need to look closely at what happened and why. Another critical point is to look for the IT help employee per thousand end-users consistently since it will directly show whether your team needs additional assistance and if hiring new candidates makes sense.

Our next dashboard has a different IT focus, and that's related to costs.

2. IT Cost Dashboard

The second of our IT report examples tackles the financial management of the IT department.

That is a crucial source of knowledge for decision-making as it provides top management and the financial department with accurate data on how the resources are used, for what, in which quantity, and the profit that you manage to make out of it all. It is split into four different KPIs:

• the return on investment (ROI) over a year, expressing the efficiency of IT investments
• a comparison of the IT spending versus its budget
• a breakdown of all the different costs involved in the management of the department
• a comparison of the costs and the revenue generated

These KPIs show a cost-related IT story and can provide you with building blocks for optimizing the current cost management. You can see that the ROI is generally great (more than 150%), and it steadily rises over time, which is the goal of every successful cost management strategy. By monitoring each of these cost-related metrics with the help of online data analysis , everyone in the IT team, finance department, and management can immediately look at the monetary effectiveness of IT projects. That way, potential issues are immediately identified and resolved. For example, if you spot higher costs in your hardware or software section, you can easily investigate what happened and brainstorm ideas to reduce each cost as much as possible. Keep in mind optimizing based on business requirements, but don't cut if there is no need for it or if it will affect the functioning of the IT department.

Our next report details project management, critical in modern, technologically-driven companies.

3. IT Project Management Dashboard

Our third report template (excellent for use as an IT department monthly report sample) is an excellent asset when you need the right overview of your IT projects to supervise several activities at once.

It tracks every task necessary to carry out your project, its evolution, where you stand at the moment, and what is delayed or needs action. With this IT report example, you can find:

• the total project budget compared to what has already been used and what is left
• the overdue tasks, the time delayed, their original deadline, and the employee responsible for the task
• the workload on each employee’s shoulders, directly affecting their capacity to deliver a task on time
• the upcoming deadlines: who is in charge, what type of task, its deadline, and the workload percentage

This type of project management dashboard is specifically developed to accommodate many different IT-related tasks to deliver a successful project. A clear overview of the planning, design, development, and testing alongside the projected launch date will clearly show the stage where the team works and what kind of tasks and deadlines are overdue or upcoming. The project budget and the workload show a clear overview of the total budget, remaining, and who in the team has time to take on additional tasks and insights into the general organization. These kinds of business intelligence solutions help in optimizing metrics and automating many of the reporting processes. For example, you may notice that the workload of one team member is lower, and you have the space to assign to him/her some overdue tasks that have a higher urgency level.

Our next template goes into strategic monitoring and development, useful for modern CTOs and CIOs.

4. CTO Report Template

Information technology reports for high-level executives have to include strategic planning and development for a longer period. CTOs have the task of managing multiple IT-related touchpoints and ensuring that internal and external technological areas are aligned and have the potential to grow. That's why creating a report is critical in order to manage and deliver that same growth. Here, we will present an IT monthly report template specifically designed for C-level management.

You can immediately spot 4 focal points that CTOs have on their radar: the learning, internal, finance/customers, and user metrics crucial for strategic progress. The learning part is developed with the ticketing system and bug issues in mind, as well as steady development and comparison with the previous month. Since the color-coding clearly shows whether there are issues or not (green indicating positive development while red indicates that the metric needs attention), the CTO can assess the situation and dig deeper into the operational level of certain metrics.

On the right side, the internal area is delivering metrics on internal processes and how well the team manages the time between failures, repair, availability, downtime, and accuracy of estimates. In this case, you can see that there are certain matters that need adjustments to keep the repairs and failures at a minimum.

The bottom of this monthly IT report template for management demonstrates the financial and customer-relevant metrics such as the percentage of IT expenses, per employee, service expenses, business system use, and net promoter score. These key performance indicators show the relationship between financial performance and whether customers are satisfied with the delivered service. If any of these metrics should change in a negative way, the CTO has to investigate why because it can directly affect the business. This dashboard can also be used as a CIO report template. The point is to adjust as needed and let the BI dashboard software do the hard work.

5. Cyber Security Dashboard

Last but certainly not least, in our information technology report sample list, we come to our cyber security dashboard. Considering that cyber security breaches cost the global economy trillions of dollars every year, fortifying your business from potential breaches or attacks is vital. 

Cohesive and highly visual, this essential IT report template is armed with a wealth of metrics designed to track and monitor a multitude of breaches, as well as internal response or resolution times.

By working with this BI reporting tool regularly, you will gain a vivid view of your company’s current cyber security prevention processes while gaining a greater understanding of all potential threat sources.

If you see phishing attempts rise over time, for example, you can develop a targeted strategy to provide comprehensive staff training while fortifying touchpoints, including your customer inquiry hub or email inboxes.

This dynamic dashboard offers all you need to:

• Track and benchmark your overall cyber security rating
• Get to grips with how frequently cyber intrusions occur across the business
• Understand how consistently and swiftly you detect potential breaches across the board
• Learn how often you back up and protect sensitive company data
• Monitor, measure, and improve your phishing test success rates

This melting pot of knowledge will give you the insight you need to nip potential threats in the bud before they cause organizational devastation while optimizing every aspect of your business’s breach-prevention initiatives. This is an essential IT report format in today’s hyper-connected digital age.

In the next part of the article, we will focus on best practices so you can start building reports on your own.

Best Practices In IT Reporting

To avoid drowning in data and losing focus of what really matters, you need to ask yourself these questions before embarking on your IT reporting journey:

• Who are my reporting efforts aimed at?
• What kind of metrics matter to my audience?
• What is the strategy behind this report: typical daily management activities or a goal-oriented, strategic assessment of the current situation (assets, resources, etc.)?

Once you’ve taken measures to understand your core departmental goals and your general strategy and considered your audience, you can start creating your report. Here are the best practices to consider:

1. Select the right KPIs: When it comes to creating an effective IT management report, selecting the best key performance indicators for the job is essential. If you’ve considered your departmental goals, aims, and objectives as well as your audience, making the right choices should be relatively straightforward. A digital data dashboard that reports KPIs is interactive and visual, and by working with metrics that align with your goals, you’ll ensure you build your IT report sample on steady foundations.

2. Avoid duplication: When it comes to collecting important metrics, there is most likely a wide range of databases set up to gather information based on different aspects of your IT-based activities. A best practice is to keep everything as simple as possible and not duplicate data too much, even when an overlap seems inevitable. When the variation and volume of data increase, so does the complexity, the effort required, and the general level of frustration.

3. Quality over quantity: Data quality is an essential part of reporting, particularly when it comes to IT. The outcomes of your reports are important, strategic decisions and, thus, should not be based on false or failing information. Make data quality management an imperative matter of your reporting journey, and catch the data quality issues as early as possible.

4. Collaborate with the team: Collaborating with your team is essential. Working together on a report will bring out more than if only one brain was on it. Communicate your findings and see what they have analyzed and dug out from the analytics. With the help of self-service BI , it is easily feasible, and several people can have access to the same source of knowledge and work.

5. Utilize templates: As you build your processes and collaborate with others, you can utilize pre-built templates to make creating your reports much easier and faster. Some solutions offer many templates, and you can easily pick one, adjust it based on your parameters and metrics, and the dashboard is done. This will also help you become faster in your reporting process, especially if you automate and deliver the report each week or month. That brings us to our next point.

6. Automate as much as possible: Last but certainly not least, automation is becoming increasingly important in our cutthroat environment. Automating as much as possible is critical, especially when deadlines are in question and projects must be delivered on time. In that case, the whole organization can profit from having reports delivered on a special weekday or month, as we mentioned, fully automated with established operational or strategic metrics.

7. Define a reporting schedule: While automation allows you to schedule reports to be generated and sent on specific dates, it is of utmost importance to plan and define a clear schedule beforehand. As you learned earlier in the post, there are many types of IT reports, each valuable in a different time frame. While a cost report must be generated every quarter or year, a cybersecurity report must be generated daily. Therefore, clearly understanding schedules will help you stay organized and prioritize tasks that need more attention. 

8. Share on multiple devices: Similar to our collaboration point, sharing through multiple devices is also critical since things can go wrong in seconds, and if you're not sitting at your desktop computer, the project or any IT-related task can go seriously wrong. That's why having access to your reports on multiple devices, such as mobile or tablet, can help avoid issues and enable you to answer any question that might arise immediately.

9. Stay compliant: As we migrate to an increasingly digital existence, rules and regulations around data protection are becoming more and more stringent. As a modern business, remaining compliant is critical. That’s why when it comes to IT, no departmental stone should be left unturned. By working with compliance dashboards, you will remain on the right side of the red tape at all times, preserving your organizational integrity in the process. These powerful IT reports will provide the means you need to streamline and secure your informational collection efforts in line with regulations like the GDPA and CCPA.

10. Define roles and responsibilities: Expanding on the point above, in order to stay compliant with regulations and security standards, it is important to define roles and responsibilities regarding the use of data. This means ensuring that only authorized people have access to IT reports and that the access is granted through top-notch security controls. This way, if any issues occur, it will be clear who is responsible. Defining clear roles and responsibilities is a key step in implementing a successful data governance plan, which aims to ensure a secure and compliant use of corporate data. 

11. Real-time data: Another best practice is working with real-time insights. In addition to using an IT department report template with historical and predictive metrics, tracking real-time or “in the moment” information across your most vital activities is essential to remaining responsive and effective. By monitoring real-time trends and patterns, you will improve your decision-making while stopping any potential issues before they snowball. Essentially, using real-time visuals to your departmental advantage will help you accurately monitor system health and keep the entire organization safe, secure, cohesive, and communicative.

12. Intelligence alerts and alarms: Setting up automated real-time data alerts will ensure you never miss an irregularity in your IT metrics (this will give you the means you need to take control of any situation, any time, and anywhere). With intelligent alerts and alarms, you can set parameters based on your specific organizational needs. For instance, you could set up a cyber breach alert that will activate when your system flags a spike in cyber attack attempts. As soon as the alarm or alert is triggered, you can get to the heart of the issue straight away while formulating strategies to improve your internal cyber breach prevention efforts.

13. Use interactive filters: To make your IT information easier to access and explore, applying interactive dashboard filters is the way forward. Working with both drill down and drill through filters will help you cut to the informational chase when necessary. Applying interactive filters will help you hone in on very specific informational pockets or info-driven trends and, ultimately, provide a more consistent service while significantly improving your strategic decision-making.

IT Reporting Mistakes To Avoid

Now that you’re up to speed with IT issues reports and dashboard analytics best practices, we will explore the mistakes you should avoid at all costs. Steer clear of these common errors, and you will ensure consistent success across the board.

• Not cleaning the data

As an IT department, you will have access to an almost infinite stream of information. But without cleaning and curating these rafts of data, you will unlikely ever connect with any useful insights. Analyzing high-quality, relevant insights is critical to operate seamlessly and securely while managing a constant barrage of helpdesk tickets.

Many IT decision-makers fail to examine their informational sources while working with dashboard software and fall into a rabbit hole of sloppy, poorly placed misinformation. To avoid wasting your resources or working with droves of data that could even harm your decision-making, you must try to clean your raw information and omit all redundant insights or sources before consolidating anything into your report.

•   Not creating backups

Another common (and fairly devastating) IT analytics mistake in the modern age is overlooking the importance of creating informational backups. If you don’t back up every strand of relevant information, you could lose it. The impact of losing information or strategic information can be great, with untold departmental resources or money wasted on clawing the department's informational initiatives back to square one. With this in mind, you must make backing up your assets and any information or insights a hard-wired part of your daily duties or practices.

• Not relying on a cloud environment

Without tapping into the potential of the cloud, you will limit your potential as an IT department. Working within a cloud-based environment will ensure everyone has greater access to the essential dashboards, metrics, and insights they need at all times. Plus, your assets will remain safe, secure, and compliant.

Cloud-based environments are also more responsive, allowing you more flexibility when it comes to carrying out analytical tasks and strategic activities. Conversely, ignoring the cloud will leave your organization vulnerable while significantly stunting your service levels and overall efficiency.

• Not following IT trends

Another big mistake IT operatives make regarding report-based initiatives is failing to keep their finger on the pulse. If you don’t follow the latest analytical-style trends in your sector, you will fall behind the pack, and the business will suffer. Keeping on top of trends will empower you to move with constant change while keeping every pocket of your IT strategy primed for success.

• Narrowing your scope

While cleaning, curating, and cropping your information is 100% essential, it’s also worth noting that only working with a small cross-section of insights is a mistake. In an IT department, juggling several plates is a big part of the job. That said, if you only work with issue dashboard insights or project management insights, the department will begin to suffer (you’ll be thriving in one area and suffering in another).

But by cleaning your insights from the offset and working with a balanced mix of insights (like those covered in our five IT support report template examples), you will remain balanced, cohesive, and effective 24/7.

In the next part of the article, we will focus on real use-cases, where professionals can utilize the power of reporting IT metrics.

What Should You Look For In IT Reporting Software

As you’ve learned by now, modern IT reports are powerful tools that help ensure your systems and data are managed in an efficient, secure, and cost-effective manner. To do so effectively, IT departments need to rely on software and technologies to make the most out of the process. Long gone are the days of manually gathering data and generating written reports. In today’s data-driven world, the reporting process has mutated into an automated environment where reports are generated in a matter of seconds and updated in real time. Leaving enough time to focus on other important tasks. 

But, with so much competition and software availability, how do you ensure you invest in the right solution for your business? For starters, you should think about a solution that meets your goals and is adaptable, meaning it will grow as your company grows. Look out for innovative features and technologies that can help boost your strategies and uncover the hidden potential behind your data. Avoid outdated desktop tools and prioritize a self-service cloud environment to take your data everywhere. 

To help you make the smartest decision, below we will discuss five features any IT reporting software worth its salt should offer. 

• Customization: In an IT environment, there is no one-size-fits-all report. Each business or client has its own system with its own set of rules and requirements. Therefore, a fundamental feature that an IT reporting software should offer is customization. IT analytics tools, such as datapine, offer white-labeling capabilities that allow users to customize the entire look and feel of the report, meaning they can add the company’s or client’s logo, font, color palette, and specific KPIs. This not only gives the report a more professional look but also makes it more efficient and targeted to specific needs. 
• Sharing capabilities: The basis of a successful data-driven company lies in collaboration. In order for the IT team to perform its activities correctly and cohesively, they need to be able to share reports and use them to collaborate. For that reason, the tool you choose should offer a range of sharing options, including a password-protected URL, automated emails, and different exporting options. At datapine, reports can be easily shared with user roles assigned to ensure only the right people can access the data. 
• Automated reports : The IT department has been handling companies' analytics requirements for decades. This usually takes a lot of time and manual work, which can also be subject to error. While most businesses today rely on self-service tools to let each department generate its own reports, many others still rely on the IT department for the process. Taking that into account, investing in a tool that offers automation features is of utmost importance. Modern IT reporting systems offer the possibility to automatically generate reports in a matter of seconds, eliminating tons of manual work and the risk of human error. 
• Real-time reporting: In today’s fast-paced environment, businesses that want to stay ahead of their competitors must make decisions with agility. This is especially true in IT, where systems and devices must be monitored at all times to ensure no issues can affect the company’s daily operations. That is where real-time reporting comes in. Having the ability to track performance in real-time gives IT employees the ability to spot any potential issues or threats as soon as they occur and significantly mitigate the damages. In the past, if a system failed, it could take hours to fix it. With real-time data, issues can be predicted, detected, and solved in a matter of minutes.
• Industry-specific features: There are a range of use cases and scenarios in which reports prove invaluable to the IT department. Therefore, the tool you choose to invest in should offer industry-specific features that can cover all those use cases efficiently. From integration to multiple data sources to automated backups to RMM features and much more, these modern capabilities will help your CTO to skyrocket the success of IT strategies and ensure the entire business is secure and efficient. 

Real-life Applications Of Dashboards & IT Reporting

Following on from our practical IT reports examples, we will explore some real-world use cases of modern dashboard reporting based on different organizational needs. While not all of these examples are directly related to IT, they serve to demonstrate the value of reporting software designed to help businesses squeeze maximum value from their most precious technical data:

a) Management: Regardless of your industry or sector, if you’re a senior staff member, you’ll be required to communicate with other managers and executives on top-level business initiatives. That said, if you’ve identified recurrent IT issues that need fixing or are looking to develop new technology initiatives to roll out across the organization, you’ll need to clearly communicate these objectives in cross-departmental meetings. A technical report template will help you do just that—as well as adhere to management reporting best practices.

b) SaaS: If your business offers, develops, or works with software-as-a-service platforms, a dynamic SaaS dashboard (akin to IT reporting tools) will help you maximize the impact of your most valuable data, some of which can be used to enhance your technical support initiatives. SaaS businesses aim to establish their IT solutions on the market, increase their customers' base and loyalty, and generate profits. To do so, comprehensive reporting is needed, and dashboards can help.

c) TV dashboards: By taking your technical support report template data and displaying it as a TV dashboard , you’ll be able to give everyone within the department real-time access to important information. Moreover, with TV dashboards strategically positioned throughout the organization, you’ll be able to improve transparency and give everyone within the business the information they need to do their job better.

d) Cyber security: If you’re looking at an IT department monthly report sample, one of these IT reporting tools should focus on cyber security. In the digital age, failing to fortify your business against the threat of cybercrime is like leaving your front door wide open. By consolidating your most valuable cybercrime-related metrics into one visual analytics dashboard, you can provide a safer, swifter, and more secure helpdesk service. In-the-moment analytics will provide alerts on potential threats so you can find the source immediately and nip any potential issues in the bud. Gaining a panoramic view of your IT-based cyber prevention metrics will also empower you to improve and update your processes according to specific cyber security trends or patterns.

e) Remote working: In an age where the concept of remote working is becoming commonplace across industries, working with the right information empowers pressured IT departments with the assets to make this most integral infrastructure possible. Nowadays, professionals expect businesses to offer remote working experiences and opportunities, so getting it right is critical to attracting and retaining the right recruits. Armed with a dynamic IT service report template, it’s possible to set up practical systems and strategies for mass remote working setups as well as video conferencing, project management software, and employee chat rooms (among many other applications).

“Big data is at the foundation of all of the megatrends that are happening today, from social to mobile to the cloud to gaming.” – Chris Lynch

The five applications mentioned above are merely the tip of the iceberg when discussing the power and versatility of dynamic digital reports. Every IT report example we've covered here offers an enormous level of value to modern IT departments looking to achieve constant and consistent growth in the face of continual change.

Key Takeaways From Modern IT Reporting 

Whether you’re working with an IT department monthly report sample, a weekly sample, or any other report level, you will boost your business performance to no end. Your IT department is the lynchpin of almost any organization. Improve the efficiency, intelligence, and responsiveness of your information technology performance, and the rest will follow.

It’s clear that to run your IT department to its optimum capacity. You need access to tools and information surpassing basic metrics and insights alone. Interactive modern reports are the way forward. Mobile, agile, robust, customizable, and highly visual, modern technical reports will help you easily tackle issues, improve the departmental structure, and make all-important daily, weekly, and monthly decisions with a justified sense of confidence.

Delivering valuable and uncompromised IT help to your end-users will determine your entire IT ecosystem's success and ongoing performance. To manage every aspect efficiently, you must work with the right tools and follow the best practices. By understanding what you need to do to create effective reports and drilling down into the wealth of features that such tools offer, you will make your IT department unstoppable, accelerating the entire business's success in the process.

Do you want to hop aboard the analytics and reporting train and push your organization forward? Try our 14-day free trial and level up your IT department today.

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REPORT ON COMPUTER NETWORKING AND COMMUNICATION

—Computer networks have become increasingly ubiquitous. However, with the increase in networked applications, there has also been an increase in difficulty to manage and secure these networks. The proliferation of 802.11 wireless networks has heightened this problem by extending networks beyond physical boundaries. We propose the use of spectral analysis to identify the type of wireless network interface card (NIC).Computer networks are a system of interconnected computers for the purpose of sharing digital information. The concept of a network began in 1962 when a server at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was connected to a server in Santa Monica, California. Since that time the proliferation of computers and computer networks has increased significantly. One of the most significant challenges to networks is attacks on their resources caused by inadequate network security. The purpose of this research project was to evaluate open source, free, intrusion detection systems and how easily they can integrate into an existing network. Research was conducted for this study through a review of existing literature pertaining to intrusion detection systems and how they function. The literature also highlighted previous studies conducted on intrusion detection systems, both commercial and open source.

Related Papers

Amrit Pal Singh

Intrusion-detection systems (IDS) aim at detecting attacks against computer systems and networks or, in general, against information systems. Its basic aim is to protect the system against malwares and unauthorized access of a network or a system. Intrusion Detection is of two types Network-IDS and Host Based-IDS. This paper covers the scope of both the types and their result analysis along with their comparison as stated. OSSEC (HIDS) is a free, open source host-base intrusion detection system. It performs log analysis, integrity checking, Windows registry monitoring, rootkit detection, time-based alerting and active response. While Snort (NIDS) is a lightweight intrusion detection system that can log packets coming across your network and can alert the user regarding any attack. Both are efficient in their own distinct fields.

Dr. Matt Plass

International Journal of Scientific Research in Science, Engineering and Technology IJSRSET

Network security is any activity designed to protect the usability and integrity of your network and data. It includes both hardware and software technologies. Effective network security manages access to the network. It targets a variety of threats and stops them from entering or spreading on your network. Network security combines multiple layers of defenses at the edge and in the network. Each network security layer implements policies and controls. Authorized users gain access to network resources, but malicious actors is blocked from carrying out exploits and threats. Two types of network includes wired and wireless network. The common vulnerability that exists in both wired and wireless networks is an " unauthorized access " to a network. An attacker can connect his device to a network though unsecure hub/switch port. In this regard, wireless network are considered less secure than wired network, because wireless network can be easily accessed without any physical connection. Network security is a big topic and is growing into a high profile Information Technology (IT) specialty area. Security-related websites are tremendously popular with savvy Internet users. The popularity of security-related certifications has expanded. Esoteric security measures like biometric identification and authentication have become commonplace in corporate America. Many organizations still implement security measures in an almost haphazard way, with no well-thought out plan for making all the parts fit together. Computer security involves many aspects, from protection of the physical equipment to protection of electronic bits and bytes that make up the information that resides on the network.

Sulaiman Olaniyi Abdulsalam

IJCSMC Journal

Yakuta Tayyebi

With the advancement in network based technology Cloud Computing is gaining more and more popularity as a huge number of enterprise applications and data are using cloud or Network based platforms. These services use the Internet, networking protocols, different management tools and programming language. Providing security is a vital feature required from these network management tools. Distributed nature of cloud computing, makes it prone to various attacks and intrusions. A variety of techniques are available to help in detecting and/or preventing such attacks. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) provide an effective technique to detect and prevent intrusions. The NIDS are mainly designed to protect the availability, confidentiality and integrity of network system. Market provides a number of open sources and commercial Intrusion Detection Systems to choose from according to the enterprises requirements. In this paper we analyse some well know open source IDS tools for feat...

IJERA Journal

Chief E D I T O R IJRISAT

Today most of the human activities required the aid of computer network and internet services such as in banking, health, marketing, research etc. These systems are required to be monitored and protected from any intrusion attack in order to provide consistent and secure services to the users. To protect the confidentiality, Integrity and the availability (CIA) of network/internet based services/systems; Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are designed. There are various commercial as well as open source IDS tools are available with its own strength & weakness. This paper provides the general discussion and various features and comparison of the available open source IDS tools such as snort and bro.

yusuf muchelule

An intrusion detection system (IDS) are devices or software's that are used to monitors networks for any unkind activities that bridge the normal functionality of systems hence causing some policy violation. This paper reviews some of the intrusion detection systems and software's highlighting their main classifications and their performance evaluations and measure. Abstract-An intrusion detection system (IDS) are devices or software's that are used to monitors networks for any unkind activities that bridge the normal functionality of systems hence causing some policy violation. This paper reviews some of the intrusion detection systems and software's highlighting their main classifications and their performance evaluations and measure.

2015 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC)

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More From Forbes

The importance of networking in project management.

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Jeannette is the CEO of  Lurdez Consulting Group . She brings over 20 years of project management success to her work helping companies.

The world of project management is a vast one. This profession entails not only preparing and educating yourself on technical skills but also learning soft skills that can contribute to the success of a project and help you deliver bottom-line results.

A lot has been said about networking, and I believe that is mostly because it is an essential part of every person’s life. Just think about it for a second: The world we live in is run by relationships. From my perspective, we would not be able to do anything if it weren't for the bonds we have built throughout our lives. And networking is all about that; it is basically the process of interacting with others to share and exchange ideas and information, as well as develop professional or social contacts who can contribute to your growth and talent.

Since project managers must have exceptional communication skills, networking is closely related to their craft. During projects, we have to constantly interact with different people; the list can go from the project team to the stakeholders, executives and so on. This might sound a bit overwhelming, but experience has taught me everything is easier when you have a good network of professionals who give you support whenever you need it. Moreover, the networking process is so enriching, it can help you learn skills and valuable tools that you will be able to put into practice in your daily tasks.

Benefits Of Networking

Building networks with professionals from your field can bring you many advantages. The completion of a project depends on the correct development of different stages, and it is very likely that you, as a project manager, might encounter difficulties or bottlenecks along this process.

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In order to be prepared, it is always wise to count on not only your expertise but also on the experience of other project managers who can help you overcome those obstacles. Your contacts might know how to properly answer your questions, and they can provide you with some fresh ideas and valuable information that you may use throughout the project. In my experience, this can save you a lot of time and money, and all this will contribute to your growth as a professional. Plus, since this is a network, you will also be sharing your added value as a professional and will help others get through their projects as well.  

Tips For Building Your Network

As a project manager, you will have plenty of opportunities to build your network. However, getting to do that is kind of a fine art. The most common ways of networking are face-to-face or using social networks. In my opinion, it is always good to combine both methods so you can have better results. "But how?" you might be wondering.

Attending a project management conference could be a great initiative. These can help you stay up-to-date with what is happening in the project management world, as you often hear the latest news, methods and innovations of the field. Furthermore, you can meet a lot of project managers who might be willing to network with you. Even if you're an introvert, put a big smile on your face and ask other attendees who they are, what their interests are and why they are at the conference. Do not worry about showing off or talking about yourself. Rather, show that you are interested in getting to know them.

Another way to expand your network is by using social media. For instance, LinkedIn has specific forums for project managers where you can connect with other professionals immediately. There are also forums related to specific project management methodologies in which project managers share their curiosities and discoveries.

All in all, to me, networking as a project manager is more than just building a brand or name; it is about creating a platform where everyone can share their knowledge and interests. It is a way of helping one another thrive in our profession and an opportunity to learn from other experiences. That is why it is essential to cultivate and maintain those relationships so they can endure in time.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?

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How to Write a Project Report: Step-By-Step Guide [+ 4 Free Templates]

By archtc on December 26, 2017 — 21 minutes to read

• How to Write a Project Report: Step-By-Step Guide Part 1
• Project Report Templates: Free Download Part 2
• Additional Resources Part 3
• How to Dramatically Reduce Time You Spend Creating Reports Part 4

At some point during the implementation of a project, a project report has to be generated in order to paint a mental image of the whole project. Ultimately, a project report must maximize the insight gained with minimal effort from the reader. Apart from describing its results, it must also explain the implications of those results to the organization and its business operations.

How to Write a Project Status Report:

The most common type of project report, a project status report provides a general state of the project to its stakeholders. It quantifies work performed and completed in measurable terms. It compares this with an established baseline to see if the project is on track or; if adjustments have to be made if the project is behind its schedule. It keeps everyone on the same page and manages each other’s expectations.

Project status reports are accomplished to serve the following purposes;

• to keep an updated flow of information in relation to the project’s progress
• to immediately address issues and concerns that may come up at any point of the project’s implementation or duration
• to document reasons for changes and adjustments made to the original plan for the project
• to monitor fund utilization and to ensure that the project expenses are still within the budget
• to serve as a basis for decision-making and addressing problems
• to keep track of the team’s performance and individual contributions
• to act as a uniform procedure for communicating project development to the stakeholders.

Status reports are most effective when they follow a standard form with predefined fields that need to be regularly updated. Doing so will save time and provide consistency and predictability of the information the stakeholders will receive about the status of the project.

WHAT TO INCLUDE

For a status report to be comprehensive, it must include the following elements:

Summary/overall health of the project, facts on the project progress, target vs. actual accomplishments, action(s) taken, risks and issues, keys to an effective project status report.

• Submit the report on time . A status report is time sensitive and sending it late defeats the purpose of such a report.
• Giving complete but inaccurate information is just as bad as giving accurate but incomplete information . Since stakeholders rely on the status report for a heads-up on the project, and its content is used as the basis for decision-making, it is critical that the report provides both complete and accurate information.
• Do not cover up bad news or adverse reports as these are all part of the transparency of the status report . Keep in mind that being open with the stakeholders, whether the project is sailing smoothly or not, will benefit both the team and the client, since any problems there are will be immediately given attention and solved.
• Be proud of the team’s accomplishments, after all, this is what the clients and the stakeholders will want to know about .
• Anticipate questions from the clients or stakeholders and be prepared to answer them .
• Be familiar with the culture of the organization and respect the information hierarchy they observe . There are instances when the CEO wants to be the first to know about the contents of these reports before cascading it to his downlines. On the other hand, middle managers will want a head start on these reports so they can also anticipate and prepare for any reaction from the top executives.
• Craft the status report in such a way that there will be no information overload . It should contain necessary information that the stakeholders need to know. Lengthy reports will consume not only the writer’s time but also that of the reader. Too many details also give an impression of micro management.

Risk Registers

All projects, or any activities of business, face risks. It is just a matter of how an organization identifies, assesses, analyzes, and monitors these risks. With a Risk Register, an organization is equipped with a tool to better respond to problems that may arise because of these risks. It helps in the decision-making process and enables the stakeholders to take care of the threats in the best way possible.

A Risk Register, also called an Issue Log, is iterative because it will be updated periodically depending on how often the team identifies a potential risk. It may also be updated if the characteristics of the existing potential risks change as the project progresses. 

The Risk Register document contains information about the following:

Risk Identification

• Risk Category:  Grouping these risks under different categories is helpful. Doing so will provide a way to make a plan of action that will address most, if not all of the risks falling under the same category, saving time, effort, and resources.
• Risk Description:  Provide a brief explanation of the identified potential risk. The description can be done in a variety of ways depending on the level of detail. A general description can be difficult to address while giving too much detail about the risk may entail a significant amount of work. Three factors to consider when making a risk description are: the way these risks are going to be managed, who will handle them, and the reporting requirements of the person receiving the risk register.
• Risk ID:  Assign a unique identification code to each risk identified to track it in the risk register easily. Create a system of coding in such a way that the category to which the said risk belongs is easily identifiable.

Risk Analysis

• Project Impact: Indicate the potential effect of the assumed risk on different aspects of the project such as budget, timelines, quality, and performance.
• Likelihood: Referring to the possibility of the risk occurring, the likelihood can be expressed qualitatively—high, medium, low—or quantitatively, if there is enough information available. Whatever criteria are to be used, assign a number—with the highest value corresponding to that which is most likely to occur.

Risk Evaluation

Using the table above, the identified risk can be ranked this way:

• Risk Trigger: These are the potential risk events that will trigger the implementation of a contingency plan based on the risk management plan. This plan should have been prepared prior to the development of a risk register.

Risk Treatment

• Prevention Plan: This enumerates the steps or action to be taken to prevent the risks from occurring.
• Contingency Plan: On the other hand, the contingency plan determines the steps or action to be taken once the risk events have occurred. This program also contains the measures to be taken to reduce the impact of such risks to the project.
• Risk Owner: The person responsible for managing risk, and the implementation of the prevention and contingency plans, it can be anyone among the stakeholders—members of the team, a project manager, or project sponsors.
• Residual Risk: Sometimes, a risk cannot be entirely eliminated after treatment. Part of it may linger throughout the duration of the project, but once it has been treated, it can be considered as a low-level risk.

Keys to an Effective Risk Register

• The first risk register must be created as soon as the project plan and the risk management plan has been approved . This initial risk register must be integrated into the project plan.
• Active risks during a particular period must also be included in the project status report .
• Risk management is an iterative process which is why the risk register must also be updated from time to time . Updates can be made when new risks are identified or there have been changes in the risks already in the register.
• The numerical value assigned to the likelihood and severity levels must remain constant throughout the duration of the whole project .
• Likewise, any terms used must be defined, and this definition must be utilized consistently .

Project Closure Report

As the end of a project, a Project Closure Report signals its culmination. Its submission officially concludes a project and implies that funds and resources will no longer be needed, and everything will go back to its status prior to the implementation of the project.

This process is critical as it will officially tie up all loose ends and prevent confusion among stakeholders.

This particular type of project report summarizes information on the project results, the criteria used to measure the effectiveness of the project delivery process, and the feedback from the stakeholders. Each performance metric includes an assessment and a narration of how the team performed on such metrics.

This performance metric describes how the team utilized the budget in carrying out the project effectively. Under this performance metric, the following aspects are measured:

Component Breakdown

Budget variance, explanations for key variances.

Describe how the team implemented the project within the expected time frame and schedule.

Overall Project Duration

Schedule variance, the explanations for key variances, change management.

This metric refers to the team’s ability to handle and manage changes throughout the project’s implementation effectively. It is measured through the following:

Total Number of Changes

The impact of the changes, the highlight of changes, quality management.

This particular metric refers to the team’s ability to observe and comply with quality standards during the project’s implementation.

Total Number of Defects Identified

The explanation for resolved defects, risk and issue management.

This metric deals with how risks and matters that occurred during project implementation were handled and resolved by the team. Key points to include are the following:

The impact of the Risks and Issues to the Project

Human resource management.

This refers to the team’s ability to carry out the project effectively.

Project Organization Structure

This metric looks at how the stakeholders participated in the project.

Decision-makers

Communication management.

Under this metric, communication throughout the duration of the project is assessed.

Communication Management Plan

• Summarize essential feedback collected . Describe the method by which these comments were gathered and who was solicited for feedback. Also include how they responded to each question and briefly discuss which items received great responses from the participants and which ones got few answers.
• Take note of common themes or trends of feedback gathered .
• From the feedback gathered, also take note of any opportunities from this feedback and discuss how these opportunities can be applied to future projects, or in the organization itself .

Lesson Learned

• Give a brief discussion of what the team learned when carrying out the project . Among these learnings, discuss which ones can be applied to future projects and how it will impact not only those future projects but also the whole organization.

Other Metrics

Other points of interest may not have been captured in the Project Status Report and may be included in the Project Closeout Report. Some of these factors include:

Duration and Effort by Project Phase

Benefits realized, benchmark comparisons, keys to an effective project closure report.

• The closure report is mostly a summary of all efforts related to the project . It is important to ensure that all highlights of the project have been properly documented so that retrieval of these reports is easier and all efforts will be acknowledged.
• Emphasize the high points the project delivered, how efficiently it was done, and what has been learned from the process.
• If there are notable variances during the project implementation, make sure to provide a fact-based explanation on it . In addition, the impact of this difference must also be described.
• A critical point in a project closure report is establishing the link between the project performance, the lessons learned, and the steps that will be taken by the organization for its continuous improvement . Aside from the project deliverables, another valuable output of a project is the learnings derived from the process and how it will be translated into concrete concepts applicable to the business processes of the organization.

Executive Summary

A little bit different from the types of project reports previously mentioned, an Executive Summary  is a distinct kind of report which uses different language. It is a high-level report which aims to provide a bigger and deeper understanding of the project—how it will benefit the organization and how it will fit into future business strategies. It is written with a busy executive in mind, someone who has a lot of important things to do and may find reading a lengthy piece of prose a waste of precious time. Factual and objective, this particular type of project report must be able to provide a realistic status of the project, as business executives understand that everything may not go according to the plan.

Some may confuse an executive summary with an abstract but, in reality, they are clearly distinct from one another and serve a different purpose.

An abstract is usually written for academic or scientific papers. It is written with a topic sentence which, generally, gives an overview of what the article is about. It is, then, supported by two or three supporting sentences which support the main idea of the topic sentence.

An executive summary, on the other hand, is composed of different sections discussing almost every significant aspect of an undertaking. It consists of sequentially arranged key points supported by conclusions and recommendations. Check our in-depth article on how to write an effective executive summary .

Things to Remember in Writing Project Reports

Here are some of the principles that need to be observed in writing an effective project report;

Write for the reader

The report should have a structure, ensure that the report is evidence-based and is supported by data, make it as objective as possible.

There is a clear distinction between facts and opinions . These should never be used together, especially if the report is dwelling on a failed project. The report becomes subjective if it reflects personal opinions of the writer. Make it objective by eliminating all parts which are not based on facts and real events. If it is really necessary to include a personal view or opinion, make sure to explicitly identify it as such. A separate section of the project report may be devoted to the writer’s personal opinion to keep the rest of the report unbiased.

There are a number of ways project reporting helps an organization, a team, and even the project itself and here are some of them:

It tracks the progress of the project

It helps identify risks, it helps manage project cost, it gives stakeholders an insight on how the project is performing, project report template: free download.

Click Here to Download Project Status Report XLSX

Click Here to Download Project Update Report DOC

Click Here to Download Project Update Report 2 DOCX

Click Here to Download General Project Report DOCX

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Templates on ProsperForms:

Edit and use this template

Additional Sources

• How to Write an Outstanding Weekly Report + Free Template Download
• Project Status Dashboard and Project Tracking
• How to Create a Project Meeting Template + Free Download

Cisco Packet Tracer Projects

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Network Administrators Project Status Report Template

• Great for beginners
• Ready-to-use, fully customizable Doc
• Get started in seconds

As a network administrator, keeping track of your projects and effectively communicating their progress is crucial. That's where ClickUp's Network Administrators Project Status Report Template comes in handy!

With this template, you can:

• Document and monitor the progress of various network infrastructure projects
• Communicate project status to stakeholders, ensuring everyone is on the same page
• Identify potential issues and take proactive measures to address them
• Track project milestones and ensure timely completion
• Ensure successful implementation and maintenance of the network

Say goodbye to scattered project updates and hello to streamlined project management with ClickUp's Network Administrators Project Status Report Template. Get started today and take control of your network projects like never before!

Benefits of Network Administrators Project Status Report Template

Network Administrators Project Status Report Template provides several benefits to network administrators, including:

• Efficiently tracking the progress of network infrastructure projects
• Communicating project status and outcomes to stakeholders
• Identifying potential issues and addressing them promptly
• Ensuring successful implementation and maintenance of the network
• Facilitating collaboration and alignment among team members
• Streamlining reporting processes and saving time
• Providing a comprehensive overview of project milestones and deadlines
• Improving accountability and transparency in project management.

Main Elements of Network Administrators Project Status Report Template

ClickUp's Network Administrators Project Status Report template is designed to help network administrators effectively communicate project updates. Here are the main elements of this template:

• Doc Template: Use the pre-designed Network Administrators Project Status Report template to easily create professional and informative project reports.
• Custom Statuses: Customize task statuses based on the progress of your projects, such as In Progress, On Hold, Completed, or any other relevant status.
• Custom Fields: Utilize custom fields to track important project details, such as Project ID, Start Date, End Date, Assigned Team Members, and any other relevant information.
• Different Views: Access various views to visualize and manage your project status reports, including List View, Calendar View, and Table View, to present information in a way that suits your needs.

With ClickUp's Network Administrators Project Status Report template, you can streamline your reporting process and keep stakeholders informed about project progress.

How to Use Project Status Report Template for Network Administrators

Putting together a project timeline can be a complex task, but with the help of the Gantt chart template in ClickUp, you can easily create a detailed and visually appealing timeline. Follow these steps to effectively use the Gantt chart template:

1. Define your project tasks

Start by listing out all the tasks that need to be completed for your project. Break them down into smaller, actionable steps to ensure clarity and accuracy.

Use tasks in ClickUp to create a comprehensive list of project tasks, assign responsible team members, and set due dates.

2. Establish task dependencies

Identify any dependencies between tasks. Some tasks may need to be completed before others can begin. Understanding these dependencies will help you create a realistic timeline and ensure that tasks are completed in the correct order.

Use the dependencies feature in ClickUp's Gantt chart to visually link tasks and establish dependencies.

3. Set task durations

Estimate how long each task will take to complete. Consider the resources available and any potential constraints that may affect the duration of each task.

Use the duration feature in ClickUp's Gantt chart to set the estimated duration for each task.

4. Allocate resources

Assign team members or resources to each task. Ensure that each task has the necessary resources and manpower to be completed on time.

Use ClickUp's workload view to allocate resources and balance the workload across your team.

5. Monitor progress

Regularly update your Gantt chart to reflect the progress of each task. As tasks are completed or delayed, make adjustments to keep your timeline accurate and up to date.

Use ClickUp's Gantt chart to track task progress, mark tasks as completed, and visualize any delays or changes in the project timeline.

6. Communicate with your team

Share the Gantt chart with your team members to keep everyone informed and aligned. Regularly communicate any updates or changes to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Use ClickUp's commenting and notification features to communicate with your team directly within the Gantt chart.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Network Administrators Project Status Report Template

Network administrators can use the Project Status Report Template to keep stakeholders informed about the progress and status of their network infrastructure projects.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to manage your network projects effectively:

• Use the Milestones View to track important project milestones and ensure they are met on time
• The Gantt Chart View will help you visualize project timelines and dependencies
• Use the Board View to manage tasks and workflows in a Kanban-style board
• The Table View will allow you to analyze and organize project data in a tabular format
• Set up recurring tasks for routine network maintenance and monitoring activities
• Utilize Automations to streamline repetitive tasks and ensure consistency
• Sync project deadlines and milestones with your Calendar View for easy scheduling

With the Network Administrators Project Status Report Template, you can keep projects on track, communicate progress effectively, and ensure the success of your network infrastructure initiatives.

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Networking Projects

Ccna projects.

The CCNA projects & reports Ebook contain 10 project reports based on CCNA and CCNP concepts. Some of the projects are networking projects using Cisco packet tracer. The reports include configurations and detailed topology diagram with explanation and can be executed with Cisco equipments as well.  The projects are designed to simulate real world scenarios based on CCNA and CCNP concepts. The details of the reports in the Ebook are provided below.

Number of pages in Ebook – 70

Total reports – 10 (Details of reports provided below)

Ebook price – $25

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Details of 10 reports in Ebook below

Network Design for Hosting Company with DDOS protection

Network Security Design for Backup Server

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Network Science (2005)

Chapter: 8 conclusions and recommendations, 8 conclusions and recommendations.

In this chapter the committee combines its findings into conclusions and offers recommendations. First, it collects the factual findings presented in Chapters 2 - 7 into three overarching conclusions concerning the importance of networks and the current state of knowledge about them. Next, it articulates specific conclusions that are directly responsive to Items 1 through 3 of the statement of task. Finally, in response to Item 4, the committee provides its recommendations, including for research initiatives. Box 8-1 summarizes how the report responds to the statement of task.

OVERARCHING CONCLUSIONS

Conclusion 1. Networks are pervasive in all aspects of life: biological, physical, and social. They are indispensable to the workings of a global economy and to the defense of the United States against both conventional military threats and the threat of terrorism.

Conclusion 1 was developed in Chapters 2 and 3 and summarized in Tables 2-1 , 2-2 , and 3-1 and the discussions surrounding them. It sets the stage for the committee’s inquiry into the state of knowledge about these networks.

Conclusion 2. Fundamental knowledge about the prediction of the properties of complex networks is primitive.

Given the pervasiveness and vital importance of networks, one might assume that a lot is known about them. As documented in Chapters 5 and 6 , however, this is not the case. Although the technology for constructing and operating engineered physical networks is sophisticated, critical questions about their robustness, stability, scaling, and performance cannot be answered with confidence without extensive simulation and testing. For large global networks, even simulations are often inadequate. The design and operation of network components (such things as computers, routers, or radios) are based on fundamental knowledge gleaned from physics, chemistry, and materials science. However, there is no comparable fundamental knowledge that allows the a priori prediction of the properties of complex assemblies of these components into networks. Indeed, such networks are expected to exhibit emergent behaviors—that is, behaviors that cannot be predicted or anticipated from the known behaviors of their components. In the case of social and biological networks, even the properties of the components are poorly known. A huge gap exists between the demand for knowledge about the networks on which our lives depend and the availability of that knowledge.

The committee learned that developing predictive models of the behavior of large, complex networks is difficult. There are relatively few rigorous results to describe the scaling of their behaviors with increasing size. Surprisingly, this is true for common engineered networks like the Internet as well as for social and biological networks.

Simulation rather than analysis is the research tool of choice. In the case of social networks, even simulation is vastly complicated by the diversity and complexity of the agents that are the nodes of the networks—humans or groups of humans “in the wild.” Which of their many properties are relevant for developing mathematical models of a particular phenomenon? Existing models of social networks, moreover, represent highly simplified situations and not necessarily ones that are relevant to the Army or network-centric warfare.

Finally, the notion of using network models in biology is relatively new. Controversy swirls around their utility, indeed around that of systems biology itself. In spite of a burgeoning literature on the structure of simple networks, the advancement of the field to allow relating basic scientific results to applications of societal and military interest still lies mostly in the future.

Conclusion 3. Current funding policies and priorities are unlikely to provide adequate fundamental knowledge about large complex networks.

Fundamental knowledge is created and stockpiled in disciplinary environments, mostly at universities, and then used as required by (vertically integrated) industries to provide the products and services required by customers, including the military. This fundamental knowledge is different in kind from empirical knowledge gleaned during the development of technology and products. You get what you measure. Suppliers of fundamental knowledge measure publications, presentations, students supervised, awards received, and other metrics associated with individual investigators. The knowledge accumulates along traditional disciplinary lines because this is where the rewards are found. Large team activities are

relatively rare (except in medicine and large-scale physics experiments) and are mostly left to the consumers of the fundamental knowledge, who must supplement the fundamental knowledge generously with empirical knowledge to convert it into the goods and services desired by the paying customer.

This scheme worked marvelously for more than a half a century, when the United States dominated the world and industries were vertically integrated. With the onset of the global economy in the 1990s, however, the situation began to change dramatically, for a number of reasons. First, knowledge, investment capital, technology, and technical labor are becoming globally available commodities. Second, economic activity, including R&D, is becoming global in scale. Third, these two trends are making the networks on which we depend ever larger and more complex and their susceptibility to disruption ever greater.

This traditional scheme does not work well for generating knowledge about global networks, because focused, coordinated efforts are needed. Thus, there is a huge difference between the social and financial arrangements needed to gain fundamental knowledge about large, complex networks in a global environment and the arrangements that worked so well to provide such knowledge for the design and production of smaller, less complex entities in a national environment. Any successful effort to create the knowledge necessary to secure robust, reliable scalable global networks must come to grips with this reality.

Overall, the committee is led to a view of networks as pervasive in and vital to modern society, yet understood only as well as the solar system was understood in Ptolemy’s time. The military has made networks the centerpiece of its transformation effort without a methodology to design networks in the physical and information domains in a predictive way for network-centric operations (NCO). Further, according to the DOD Office of Force Transformation, research in the cognitive and social domains has yet to yield advances comparable to the technological developments in the information domain. At the same time, current efforts by academia to describe networks are fragmented and disjointed. Relatively little of the current research on networks promises to create a science of networks that will generate knowledge adequate to meet the demand.

In short, there is a massive disconnect between the importance of networks in modern society and military affairs on the one hand and, on the other, the support of coherent R&D activities that would raise current network technologies and capabilities to the next level. The Army alone cannot transform this situation, but it can make a beginning.

SPECIFIC CONCLUSIONS

Items 1 and 2 in the statement of task inquire into the appropriateness of a field of investigation called network science and its definition, content, and the research challenges that would characterize it. Elements of a field of network science have begun to emerge in different disciplines spanning engineering, biological, and social networks. The emerging field is concerned with the development and analysis of network representations to create predictive models of observed physical, biological, and social phenomena.

The remarkable diversity and pervasiveness of network ideas renders the study of network science a highly leveraged topic for both civilian and military investment. The provisional consensus around its core content clearly defines the notion of network science. By making an investment in network science, the Army could forge a single approach to a diverse collection of applications.

Conclusion 4. Network science is an emerging field of investigation whose support will address important societal problems, including the Army’s pursuit of network-centric operations capabilities.

Although the boundaries of network science are fuzzy, there is broad agreement on key topics that should be included within the field, the types of tools that must be developed, and the research challenges that should be investigated. These were documented in Chapters 3 and 4 .

Conclusion 5. There is a consensus among the practitioners of research on networks for physical, biological, social, and information applications on the topics that make up network science.

Responses to its questionnaire greatly assisted the committee in determining “the key research challenges to enable progress in network science.” These responses establish that there is a fair degree of consensus on these challenges across practitioners in diverse applications areas.

Conclusion 6. There are seven major research challenges the surmounting of which will enable progress in network science:

Dynamics, spatial location, and information propagation in networks. Better understanding of the relationship between the architecture of a network and its function is needed.

Modeling and analysis of very large networks. Tools, abstractions, and approximations are needed that allow reasoning about large-scale networks, as well as techniques for modeling networks characterized by noisy and incomplete data.

Design and synthesis of networks. Techniques are needed to design or modify a network to obtain desired properties.

Increasing the level of rigor and mathematical structure. Many of the respondents to the questionnaire felt that the current state of the art in network

science did not have an appropriately rigorous mathematical basis.

Abstracting common concepts across fields. The disparate disciplines need common concepts defined across network science.

Better experiments and measurements of network structure. Current data sets on large-scale networks tend to be sparse, and tools for investigating their structure and function are limited.

Robustness and security of networks. Finally, there is a clear need to better understand and design networked systems that are both robust to variations in the components (including localized failures) and secure against hostile intent.

These challenges are elaborated in terms of specific research issues and their theoretical, experimental, and practical difficulties in Chapter 7 and Appendix E within the framework of exploring various investment scenarios. The scenarios respond to Item 3 in the statement of task.

Although all the military services have a vision of the future in which engineered communications networks play a fundamental role, there is no methodology for ensuring that these networks are scalable, reliable, robust, and secure. Of particular importance is the ability to design networks whose behaviors are predictable in their intended domains of applications. This also is true in the commercial sphere. Creation of such a methodology is an especially pressing task because global commercial networks can also be exploited by criminal and terrorist social networks.

Conclusion 7. The high value attached to the efficient and failure-free operation of global engineered networks makes their design, scaling, and operation a national priority.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The statement of task requests investment recommendations from the committee. Options for these recommendations are explored in Chapter 7 and Appendix E . The committee documents in Chapters 2 and 3 that the impact of networks on society transcends their impact on military applications, although both are vital aspects of the total picture. Chapters 3 and 4 explain that the current state of knowledge about networks does not support the design and operation of complex global networks for current military, political, and economic applications. Advances in network science are essential to developing adequate knowledge for these applications.

Recommendation 1. The federal government should initiate a focused program of research and development to close the gap between currently available knowledge about networks and the knowledge required to characterize and sustain the complex global networks on which the well-being of the United States has come to depend.

This recommendation is buttressed by centuries of evidence that disruptive social networks (e.g., terrorists, criminals) learn to exploit evolving infrastructure networks (e.g., communications or transportation) in ways that the creators of these networks did not anticipate. The global war on terrorism, which is a main driver of military transformation, is only one recent manifestation of this general pattern. Society has the same need in other areas, such as control of criminal activities perpetrated using the global airline and information infrastructures. Addressing problems resulting from the interaction of social and engineered networks is an example of a compelling national issue that transcends the transformation of the military and that is largely untouched by current research on networks.

Within this broad context, Recommendations 1a, 1b, and 1c provide the Army with three options:

Recommendation 1a. The Army, in coordination with other federal agencies, should underwrite a broad network research initiative that includes substantial resources for both military and nonmilitary applications that would address military, economic, criminal, and terrorist threats.

The Army can lead the country in creating a base of network knowledge that can support applications for both the Army and the country at large. Maximum impact could be obtained by a coordinated effort across a variety of federal agencies, including the DOD and the Department of Homeland Security, to create a focused national program of network research that would develop applications to support not only NCO but also countermeasures against international terrorist and criminal threats.

Alternatively, if the Army is restricted to working just with the DOD, it should initiate a focused program to create an achievable vision of NCO capabilities across all the services.

Recommendation 1b. If the Army wants to exploit fully applications in the information domain for military operations in a reasonable time frame and at an affordable cost, it should champion the initiation of a high-priority, focused DOD effort to create a realizable vision of the associated capabilities and to lay out a trajectory for its realization.

Finally, if the Army elects to apply the insight from the committee primarily to its own operations, it can still provide leadership in network science research.

TABLE 8-1 Network Research Areas

Recommendation 1c. The Army should support an aggressive program of both basic and applied research to improve its NCO capabilities.

Specific areas of research of interest to the Army are shown in Table 8-1 . This table expresses the committee’s assessment of the relative priorities for these areas, the time frames in which one might reasonably expect them to be consummated as actionable technology investment options, and the degree of commercial interest in exploiting promising options. Specific research problems and sample projects are given in Appendix E . The committee notes that both trained personnel and promising research problems exist in many of these areas, so the Army should be able to create a productive program readily.

By selecting from among Recommendations 1a through 1c an option that is ambitious yet achievable, the Army can lead the country in creating a base of knowledge emanating from network science that is adequate to support applications on which both the Army and the country at large depend. Regardless of which option (or options) are adopted, Army initiatives in network science should be grounded in basic research.

Recommendation 1d. The initiatives recommended in 1, 1a, 1b, and 1c should include not only theoretical studies but also the experimental testing of new ideas in settings sufficiently realistic to verify or disprove their use for intended applications.

Recommendations 1, 1a, 1b, and 1c span only part of the investment opportunity space—namely, those segments of the space described in Scenarios 2 and 3 in Chapter 7 and Appendix E . They will involve substantial changes in how the Army invests its R&D dollars and in how it plans and manages these investments.

The Army also has the opportunity associated with Scenario 1 in Chapter 7 , which involves funding a small program of basic research in network science. This investment of relatively small amounts of Army risk capital funds would create a base of knowledge and personnel from which the Army could launch an attack on practical problems that arise as it tries to provide NCO capabilities.

Investments in basic (6.1) research in network science can generate significant value; however, the committee wants to be crystal clear that such investments have no immediate prospects of impacting the design, testing, evaluation, or sourcing of NCO capabilities. They would create additional knowledge that builds the core content of network science, and they would train researchers who could also be recruited by the Army for later efforts. While the knowledge generated would probably be less valuable than in the case

of Scenarios 2 and 3, the cost is less and implementation can be immediate.

If the Army elects to exploit Scenario 1, the committee offers the following two further recommendations:

Recommendation 2. The Army should make a modest investment of at least $10 million per year to support a diverse portfolio of basic (6.1) network research that promises high leverage for the dollars invested and is clearly different from existing investments by other federal agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

This modest level of investment is compatible with the Army’s current R&D portfolio. There is an adequate supply of promising research topics and talented researchers to make this investment productive. Additionally, it can be implemented within the Army’s current R&D management work processes, although some enhancements along the lines noted in Chapter 7 and Appendix E would improve the return on this investment.

To identify the topics in basic network science research that would bring the most value to NCO, the committee recalls that the open system architectures for computer networks consist of layers, each of which performs a special function regarded as a “service” by the layers above. It is useful to distinguish among the lower (physical and transport) layers of this architecture, the higher (applications) layers that are built on top of them to offer services to the people, and the cognitive and social networks that are built higher still, on top of the services-to-humans layers.

Research on the lower layers of the network architecture is relatively mature. Improving the services offered at these levels is more of an engineering problem than one requiring basic research. The most immediate payoffs from network science are likely to result from research associated with the upper levels of the network architecture and the social networks that are built at an even higher level upon their outputs. This is where the committee thinks that Army investments are most likely to create the greatest value.

An area of particular promise that has little or no current investment is the social implications of NCO for the organizational structure and command and control. Basic research could provide valuable insight into how military personnel use advanced information exchange capabilities to improve combat effectiveness. For example, one might study how troops in combat could use these capabilities to make better decisions. Additional basic research in the core content of network science might help to determine how the Army can most productively utilize the capabilities of its advanced information infrastructure.

Recommendation 3. The Army should fund a basic research program to explore the interaction between information networks and the social networks that utilize them.

The Army can implement Recommendations 2 and 3 within the confines of its present policies and procedures. They require neither substantial replanning nor the orchestration of joint Army/university/industry research projects. They create significant value and are actionable immediately.

The committee’s Recommendations 1, 1a through 1d, 2, and 3 give the Army an actionable menu of options that span the opportunity space available. By selecting and implementing appropriate items from this menu, the Army can develop a robust network science to “enable progress toward achieving Network-Centric Warfare capabilities,” as requested in the statement of task.

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The military is currently attempting to develop itself into a force capable of networkcentric operations. While this effort has highlighted the military’s dependence on interacting networks, it has also shown that there is a huge gap between what we need to know about networks and our fundamental knowledge about network behavior. This gap makes the military vision of NCO problematic. To help address this problem, the Army asked the NRC to find out whether identifying and funding a new field of “network science” could help close this gap. This report presents an examination of networks andthe military, an analysis of the promise, content, and challenges of network science, and an assessment of approaches to creating value from network science.

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Former NSW transport minister calls for release of McNaughton report into regional fast rail

The NSW candidate for Gilmore says a fast train network between Nowra and Newcastle could be built in 15 to 20 years largely using existing rail corridors and tracks.

Candidate Andrew Constance, who was the NSW transport minister from 2015 till 2021 , said the Andrew McNaughton report into regional transport and roads should be released to inform work being undertaken by the High Speed Rail Authority.

Mr Constance said if a metro rail network can be built in Sydney in just ten years, then high speed rail from Newcastle to Nowra via western Sydney can be built within 20 years.

"What we are talking about is how you can use much of your existing corridors, a combination of tunnels, straightening the tracks and looking at ways you can deliver a faster train," he said. 

"If anybody thinks this is pie-in-the-sky stuff, just look what we have been able to do. 

"We built a second train network for Sydney inside ten years.

"I think it's doable and possible over a 15 to 20-year period based on the expertise of Andrew McNaughton, and that report should be immediately released by the NSW government so everybody can read it and see it."

The report by UK high speed rail expert Professor Andrew McNaughton was commissioned by former premier Gladys Berejiklian, who made fast rail promises a showcase of her 2019 re-election campaign.

The plans were quietly scrapped by her successor Dominic Perrottet in the lead-up to the March 2023 election, which he lost.

Andrew Constance said he was no longer the transport minister when the report was ready to be released.

He resigned from parliament in October 2021.

The report was believed to have suggested a prioritised connection between Newcastle and Wollongong via Sydney's Olympic Park, with trip times of just one hour and 90 minutes respectively.

Fast rail would follow to Canberra via the Southern Highlands and to the Central West in due course.

University of Wollongong rail expert Phillip Laird said Mr McNaughton gave a number of interviews outlining his fast rail vision.

"He doesn't favour a totally new high speed rail from Sydney to Newcastle with all the viaducts and tunnels that go with dedicated high speed rail, but a combination of upgrades with deviations and making judicious use of the existing railway," Mr Laird said.

Strategy 'not supported'

In response to calls to release the report, Regional Transport Minister Jenny Aitchison confirmed a fast rail strategy was completed in 2020 outlining the staged delivery of a future fast rail network, but said its release was not supported by the previous government.

"This strategy was not publicly released, and release of the strategy to the new government was not supported by the previous NSW government," she told NSW Parliament last year.

A spokesperson for Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the McNaughton report was made a cabinet in confidence document by Gladys Berejiklian and Andrew Constance so could not be released by the current Labor government.

The ABC asked federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development Catherine King if she wanted the report released.

Her office said its findings were being incorporated into the current work underway by the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), which was prioritising the Sydney to Newcastle route.

"The Authority's initial focus is the development of the Sydney-to-Newcastle business case, which is expected to be provided to government by the end of 2024," a spokeswoman said.

"The business case will build on previous work completed by Transport for NSW in 2019 on fast rail for Sydney to Newcastle and the Commonwealth's 2013 high speed rail study that included an alignment from Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney and Canberra."

Rail commuters unhappy

For rail users like Tony Horneman from Wollongong, any improvements, no matter how small, cannot come soon enough.

Mr Horneman, a spokesperson for the Illawarra Rail Fail group, has commuted between Wollongong and Sydney for seven years.

"From a commuter perspective we just want a better rail service down here," he said.

"With the migration of the population from Sydney down to the South Coast there's just so many more people that want to use that rail link to Sydney and it's not fit for purpose anymore."

"To the point where there is a single line track at Coalcliff so all the trains north and south have to be scheduled through that single line along with all the freight movements between Sydney and the South Coast."

Track upgrade delayed

It is a similar situation south of Kiama where the NSW government previously committed to a $125-million track upgrade project called the Toolijooa Passing Loop project.

Ms Aitchison told parliament the NSW government decided to "delay and de-scope several projects, including the the fast rail program" following an infrastructure review.

"The Toolijooa Passing Loop project is part of fast rail. No further activities are planned at this stage," she said.

Mr Horneman is disappointed the new Mariyung intercity trains due four years ago still have not been delivered and says the lack of improvements south of Kiama just add to the frustration.

"I have done that trip a few times and it is third world having to go to Kiama on an electric-powered train and then having to get on a diesel-powered train on a single track to Bomaderry," he said.  

"Again, there is population growth down there and no improvement to the public transport in that area."

A spokesperson for the NSW government said it stands by its $10 million commitment to improving connections for rail passengers and freight services on the south coast.

"We have tasked Transport for NSW with examining options for the delivery of an Illawarra Rail Resilience Plan," the spokesperson said.

"This plan is currently in the early stages of development."

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Environmental Protection Agency Gives $20 Billion in ‘Green Bank’ Grants

The E.P.A. said the fund will spur a clean energy transition in overlooked communities. Republicans called it a “greendoggle.”

By Lisa Friedman

When Marcus Jones and his business partner, Akunna Olumba, set out to open a pizzeria in Detroit, they spoke with banks about their green vision: solar panels on the roof, an energy-efficient tankless water heater and a rooftop system to capture storm water.

“The lenders thought we were crazy,” Mr. Jones said. Traditional banks were skeptical that such investments would yield a return, and few had ever issued loans for clean energy or efficiency measures. They told the restaurateurs that it simply was not done.

Instead, the pair connected with a so-called green bank, one of a growing number of entities that lend money to businesses and individuals for equipment or technology that reduces the pollution driving climate change.

The movement will get a $20 billion infusion from the Biden administration on Thursday in what Vice President Kamala Harris calls “the largest investment in financing for community-based climate projects in our nation’s history.”

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to award grants ranging from $500 million to $6.9 billion to eight nonprofits. The organizations will in turn use the money to offer loans to businesses, homeowners and others to spur clean energy across the country, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.

Loans could be for something as small as helping one family purchase an electric induction stove or as ambitious as helping to build energy-efficient low-income housing.

“We’re putting an unprecedented $20 billion to work in communities that for too long have been shut out of resources to lower costs and benefit from clean technology solutions,” Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A., said in a statement.

Republicans, however, have slammed the money as a “greendoggle” and said that the E.P.A. is not prepared to oversee such a large program. House Republicans passed a bill in March that would repeal the greenhouse gas reduction program.

President Biden threatened to veto the measure if it were to reach his desk, and it has not come for a vote in the Senate. Representative Gary Palmer, the Alabama congressman who wrote the bill, called the E.P.A. initiative a “Green New Deal slush fund” that “raises many concerns about lack of accountability and oversight.”

The Biden administration is working to quickly distribute money from the program before January 2025, when a future administration or a Republican-controlled Congress could eliminate the funds.

The administration estimated the program would attract about $150 billion in private capital, or about $7 for every federal dollar spent. The awardees have committed to collectively cut or avoid up to 40 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the next seven years. That would be the equivalent of taking about 9.5 million cars off the road for a year.

Mr. Regan said the new network of clean energy financing would “unleash tens of thousands of clean technology projects like putting solar on small businesses, electrifying affordable housing, providing EV loans for young families, and countless others.”

The $20 billion comes from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s signature climate law, which included $27 billion for a program known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

The biggest grants under the program include $6.97 billion to a coalition called Climate United Fund, which is led by Calvert Impact, a nonprofit investment firm. The Coalition for Green Capital, a nonprofit founded by Reed Hundt, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was awarded $5 billion. Power Forward America, which is made up of five climate and housing organizations, was awarded $2 billion.

The idea for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund goes back more than two decades, when a group of financiers proposed the idea of a national bank that could attract private investment by pumping public money into things like electric vehicle charging station networks, community solar projects and other renewable energy adoption.

The E.P.A. program is similar to that concept, but instead of one national bank, the agency is funding the different nonprofit groups, which will act as lenders.

“This has been a long road to get here,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, who introduced legislation in 2009 to create a green bank.

Mr. Van Hollen said he expects the funding will make a significant difference in low-income communities where residents may be less likely to take advantage of federal tax incentives that are available for electric vehicles or certain home appliances, like induction stoves and heat pumps, because they lack the upfront cash to make the purchase.

“We don’t want any community to be left behind in the transition to the clean energy economy,” he said.

One grant recipient, Rewiring America, currently does work in communities like De Soto, Ga., a rural area where it has made loans and awarded grants to help about 78 families upgrade appliances and weatherize homes.

Mildred Carter, 73, said when the water heater in her De Soto home gave out last year she thought, “Oh my God, not this now on top of everything else, I can’t afford a new water heater.” Retired after 21 years working at Walmart, Ms. Carter said she went without hot water for two months before she found Rewiring America and applied for a grant for a free electric heat pump and installation.

Ms. Carter said she is concerned about clean energy and climate change. But when it came to her heat pump, she said, “At the time I didn’t care, I just wanted to make sure I had hot water.”

In Detroit, Mr. Jones and Ms. Olumba’s restaurant, Detroit Pizza Bar, has been open for two years and is the first Black-owned pizzeria in the city’s Livernois Six-Mile area. It also is the first sit-down restaurant in the area in more than three decades.

Mr. Jones said the money he borrowed from Michigan Saves, a nonprofit, to purchase solar panels and energy efficiency measures has more than paid off. He said his customers only notice the solar panels and rooftop rain barrels when he points them out. “They’re coming for pizza,” he said.

Vice President Harris and Mr. Regan were expected to announce the awards in Charlotte, N.C.

Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities. More about Lisa Friedman

Facebook snooped on users’ Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal

In 2016, Facebook launched a secret project designed to intercept and decrypt the network traffic between people using Snapchat’s app and its servers. The goal was to understand users’ behavior and help Facebook compete with Snapchat, according to newly unsealed court documents. Facebook called this “Project Ghostbusters,” in a clear reference to Snapchat’s ghost-like logo.

On Tuesday, a federal court in California released new documents discovered as part of the class action lawsuit between consumers and Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

The newly released documents reveal how Meta tried to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors, including Snapchat and later Amazon and YouTube, by analyzing the network traffic of how its users were interacting with Meta’s competitors. Given these apps’ use of encryption, Facebook needed to develop special technology to get around it.

One of the documents details Facebook’s Project Ghostbusters. The project was part of the company’s In-App Action Panel (IAPP) program, which used a technique for “intercepting and decrypting” encrypted app traffic from users of Snapchat, and later from users of YouTube and Amazon, the consumers’ lawyers wrote in the document.

The document includes internal Facebook emails discussing the project.

“Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted we have no analytics about them,” Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in an email dated June 9, 2016, which was published as part of the lawsuit. “Given how quickly they’re growing, it seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them. Perhaps we need to do panels or write custom software. You should figure out how to do this.”

Facebook’s engineers solution was to use Onavo , a VPN-like service that Facebook acquired in 2013. In 2019, Facebook shut down Onavo after a TechCrunch investigation revealed that Facebook had been secretly paying teenagers to use Onavo so the company could access all of their web activity.

After Zuckerberg’s email, the Onavo team took on the project and a month later proposed a solution: so-called kits that can be installed on iOS and Android that intercept traffic for specific subdomains, “allowing us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage,” read an email from July 2016. “This is a ‘man-in-the-middle’ approach.”

A man-in-the-middle attack — nowadays also called adversary-in-the-middle — is an attack where hackers intercept internet traffic flowing from one device to another over a network. When the network traffic is unencrypted, this type of attack allows the hackers to read the data inside, such as usernames, passwords, and other in-app activity.

Given that Snapchat encrypted the traffic between the app and its servers, this network analysis technique was not going to be effective. This is why Facebook engineers proposed using Onavo, which when activated had the advantage of reading all of the device’s network traffic before it got encrypted and sent over the internet.

“We now have the capability to measure detailed in-app activity” from “parsing snapchat [sic] analytics collected from incentivized participants in Onavo’s research program,” read another email.

Later, according to the court documents, Facebook expanded the program to Amazon and YouTube.

Inside Facebook, there wasn’t a consensus on whether Project Ghostbusters was a good idea. Some employees, including Jay Parikh, Facebook’s then-head of infrastructure engineering, and Pedro Canahuati, the then-head of security engineering, expressed their concern.

“I can’t think of a good argument for why this is okay. No security person is ever comfortable with this, no matter what consent we get from the general public. The general public just doesn’t know how this stuff works,” Canahuati wrote in an email, included in the court documents.

In 2020, Sarah Grabert and Maximilian Klein filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook , claiming that the company lied about its data collection activities and exploited the data it “deceptively extracted” from users to identify competitors and then unfairly fight against these new companies.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

Google, Meta, and Snap did not respond to requests for comment.

This story was updated to correct the link to the discovery documents in the fourth paragraph.

Facebook will shut down its spyware VPN app Onavo