Book excerpt: Today's rapidly changing technology offers increasingly complex challenges to the network administrator, MIS director and others who are responsible for the overall health of the network. This Network Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide picks up where other network manuals and texts leave off. It addresses the areas of how to anticipate and prevent problems, how to solve problems, how to operate a healthy network and how to troubleshoot. Network Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide also provides basic technical and troubleshooting information about cable testing, Ethernet and Token Ring networks and additional information about Novell's IPX(R) protocol and TCP/IP. Examples are shown as either diagrams and tables, or screen captures from Fluke instruments. Network professionals will appreciate the guide's "real world" orientation toward solving network crises quickly, by guiding readers to solutions for restoration of end to end data delivery as quickly as possible. The network novice will learn from the simplified descriptions about networking technology in the Appendices.