Summary

Although networking is a topic that could consume many chapters in this book, the fundamentals that you need to know to be able to manage a Solaris system on the network are described here. All the concepts that you need to know for the Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 10 Operating Environment exam (CX-310-202) are described.

After reading this chapter, you should have an understanding of the two types of network modelsISO/OSI and TCP/IPand the component layers of these two models.

The network hardware and software components are described in this chapter, along with the new method of configuring and managing network services. Some new commands were introduced, specifically inetadm and inetconv.

Finally, this chapter discussed some of the network-related commands and utilities that you can use for monitoring and maintaining the network. In a networked environment, system performance depends on how well you've maintained your network. An overloaded network can disguise itself as a slow system and can even cause downtime. You should monitor your network continuously. You need to know how the network looks when things are running well so that you know what to look for when the network is performing poorly. The network commands described in this chapter only report numbers. You're the one who decides whether these numbers are acceptable for your environment. As stated earlier, practice and experience will help you excel at system administration. The same holds true for network administration.

Chapter 9 describes how to manage swap space, configure core and crash dump files, and use NFS to share file systems across a network. You'll also learn how to configure the automounter for use with AutoFS.