• LAN Management and Monitoring Toolsnetwork cable image by Radoslav Lazarov from Fotolia.com
  
  A LAN technician's job is to ensure the network delivers reliable and secure services to meet an organization's communication and operational needs. The smooth running of a network is becoming more and more critical with the requirements for more complex and more dynamic business services. Fortunately, there are various network management, monitoring and troubleshooting tools available to assist LAN technicians to conduct their daily work.
  
  

Netstat

• This command-line tool shows the network associated data structure including active TCP connections, ports that are listening, Ethernet statistics, the IP routing table and IP statistics. It performs statistics for the following: Protocols, Local Address, Foreign Address and state. Local Address stands for the local computer and port numbers being employed. Foreign Address indicates the IP address and port number of remote computer to which the socket is linked.
  
  

Netcat

• This tool reads and writes data across TCP or UDP network connections. This tool was developed to be a powerful back-end tool that can be utilized or embedded by other software. It is a useful tool with various features in terms of debugging and exploration. It is extended by adding features to support many other socket types such as SSL encryption and SOCKS proxies.
  
  

Look@LAN Network Monitor

• Look@LAN Network Monitor is used to monitor a network and detect and analyze your network nodes. This tool can send you alerts in the event of any changes to the nodes. This tool illustrates all available nodes and detailed statistics and the scan results involve every computer of the network, regarding real-time trace route report, ping results and active services.
  
  

CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution (LMS)

• This tool offers the comprehensive management tools required to facilitate configuring, administering, monitoring and troubleshooting Cisco networks. It offers a system for sharing device information across management applications, automation of device management, insight into the ability of the network and finding network issues. With basic network knowledge, LMS can greatly decrease network management workload.