The Importance of Comprehensive Network Documentation

Comprehensive network documentation is important for IT teams to manage issues and solve concerns faster and easier. Network documentation is a difficult and hard to create but if a company focuses on the initial creation and automation tasks, it will provide many benefits. Here are a few important factors of comprehensive network documentation:

Simplify Troubleshooting: IT teams can troubleshoot network issues, fix connections and resolve issues faster with proper documentation.

Increase Security: Network documentation helps companies identify old devices, out of date firmware and other security risks.

Improve Network Growth/Change Planning: Proper documentation allows IT management to plan for future network growth or upgrades. It also helps budget and cost planning.

Meet Compliance: Network documentation is required by most security regulations. In Europe the new NIS2 regulations will require each organization to have an up to date network map. Proper documentation also helps with internal and external audits.

Seamless Knowledge Transfer: Documentation ensures that network knowledge is shared within and organization and not lost when an employee leaves.

To create comprehensive network documentation, consider including the following:

Network topology diagrams created by automated solutions like UVexplorer and others.
Hardware and software inventories of all devices connected to your network.
Network device configuration files for routers, switches and routers.
Security policies and procedures

Network documentation is a difficult but beneficial task for IT teams. The importance of comprehensive network documentation will only be seen after the information is collected, processed and available to team members. IT teams can implement automated tools to gather and keep this information up to date. Using in-depth network documentation will help an organization decrease downtime and resolve issues faster in the future.