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For the last level of wireless network administration we're going to talk about is probably the biggest. And that's the enterprise level. Enterprise-level networks are the huge networks you might find in a large company. They have dozens or hundreds of users. It probably connects to a wired network infrastructure that has some complicated network devices and some complex services going on and there may be different levels of technology going on and maybe mobile users. There may be inventory devices that are wireless and so forth. So you are now getting into the more complex networks and they basically require a more defined rigorous effort at administration. This is not just the kind of thing where you can do part-time. Normally these networks have dedicated administrators for the wireless network alone, in addition to any administrators they may have for the wired network. Now, you'll find that documentation is an absolute necessity in these networks. You're not going to get by with, uh, just having stuff in your head and, and kind of helping somebody out by saying well, I think this wireless access point's over there and I think it's configured like this. That's not going to work. You'll lose your job very quickly. Documentation is a necessity. In addition to documentation, normally on most enterprise-level networks the equipment and the software are standardized. You don't have a bunch of hodge podge equipment out there and software. Normally you have enterprise licenses for software and you have enterprise-level industrial equipment. Uh, something, you're not using some of the soho network, uh, access points anymore. Now, within the wireless networks we usually have a few defined areas of administration. You'll probably be doing all of these. Understand that these may fall into different categories. First of all, you may have user or mission support. You might be the help desk person who's taking phone calls about wireless connection issues. You may be supporting some of the sections within the company. For example, the manufacturing section that has some particular wireless needs and you may be doled out to support them in particular. You also have backup services, redundancy, or guaranteed service levels and their associated services that you may have to take care of. You might be the person that walks around and makes sure that the, that everything is work right, that the lights are blinking the way they're supposed to. You might be responsible for backing up the configurations once a week or once a month and you might be responsible for handling the contract with the ISP if service does not come up to standard. You also are responsible for security of the wireless network. And when we talk about security, of course we're talking encryption, we're talking about authentication, we're talking about levels of access. You are also going to be responsible for maintenance. Now, you might not be doing the maintenance itself, but you might be responsible for scheduling it, recording it, authorizing it, getting a maintenance personnel on site, managing the contract and things of that nature. As we said before, documentation is very important, but planning and the integration is, uh, also very important as well and it's a constant in enterprise-level networks. When we talk about planning, you have to do it right the first time. You can not mess this up and then later on hope to go back and redo it. The costs are magnified when you have to redo a job, versus just doing it right the first time. If you've planned poorly and bought the wrong equipment that didn't take into account a level of encryption, for example, that your company requires and then you're going to have to go and tell the company president that hey, we bought the wrong equipment, we're going to have to go and buy a bunch of brand-new equipment, that's not going to sit very well and you're probably not going to keep your job very long. So you've got to take the time and effort to do it right the first time. You'll find that wireless networks, like the wired networks, are probably going to be considered a business-critical asset, pretty much like real property or capital, money for example. These are business assets that help make the business go and the, and, and the emphasis will be placed on keeping this wireless network running like a top. They're not just going to blow it off and, and trust anybody with it. They're going to trust somebody with it that knows why it's needed and what it has to do. So you need to take that attitude with it, that you're managing this wireless network because it's a business-critical asset. Now, some of the things you need to do, in addition to the other things we've discussed about with small and medium networks, and even home networks, all those things that we talked about earlier apply. There are some other things you can do too. First of all, you need to maintain your equipment list. You need to know where every piece of equipment is physically and logically. What its IP address is. What its MAC address is. The fact it's on the third floor in the phone wiring closet at the end of the hall. You need to know all this stuff and it has to be documented. You want to document every single aspect of your wireless infrastructure, your user list, what services are run, what wireless clients are out there, what their MAC addresses are, what software they're running, which access points you have, what brands they are. You're going to have to document every single bit of this and you're going to have to diagram the infrastructure out so that not only someone else can take a look at this and troubleshoot and manage it, but just because you need it for historical purposes. You also either need to set or encourage your management to set defined security policies and procedures. There needs to be a procedure for connecting to the network, for using it. A policy on what can and can not be done. Where you can go and where you can't go. What resources you can access and which ones you can't. There needs to be a security policy on what level encryption will be used. Basically all this needs to be defined so you can enforce it. If you don't have it defined, it's difficult to enforce. You need to maintain inventory, not only of equipment but software. You need to maintain inventory of backups, configuration backups for your access point. And if those access points are capable of auditing and logging, you need to maintain those audit trails, those logs. Sometimes there's some governmental regulations as to how long you'll keep logs and audit trails. Sarbanes-Oxley for example. Or HIPAA may require that you keep logs for a certain amount of time so you have to make plans to maintain those audit trails. The other thing you want to do too is plan for growth and advance. Don't constrict your network to a certain size and then all of a sudden your company merges with another company and you wind up having to grow that network by two or three hundred users and you haven't configured your wireless network appropriately. So you want to take that into account as well. As a wireless network administrator on an enterprise-level network, it would behoove you to become familiar with applicable compliance regulations and policies. Some businesses may have compliance regulations that you don't necessarily understand or, or know or understand why they apply to you as a wireless network guy, but they may still apply because of the need to keep data, to keep audit trails or logs. Some of those might be size or FCC regulations or even the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or HIPAA if you work in the medical community. They may apply to your enterprise and some of those provisions of those particular regulations may apply to you. In addition to the regulations, you also want to be very familiar with any standards you work with. IEEE standards of course. You want to be familiar with those, being network administrator on a wireless network, but also Wi-Fi Forum, Wi-Fi Alliance standards, the NIST standards, the 897, 98 standards, any DOD standards of you work for a DOD, if you're a contractor working at a Department of Defense agency. There are standards out there that apply to wireless networks. You need to be familiar with those standards. From a technical perspective, you need to be prepared to support a wide variety of users and technologies. Never assume that the technologies that you support might be the only technologies you ever support. You need to stay a technical expert and try to learn constantly and become involved with learning new technologies as they come up, or at least becoming familiar with them so that you can intelligently explain them to management sometimes and tell them why it's a good idea to integrate them into your existing technologies or a bad idea. The bottom line in enterprise wireless networks, or even small business networks, is be proactive in security and managing your network. Don't sit still because your wireless network definitely won't sit still.