With many of the new drupal hosting solutions we find a super-site system of some sort; Drush, Aegir, Pantheon, Gardens, etc. acting as a sites manager.

The difference in role between administrator and multi-host administrator or administrator and multi-domain multi-host administrator is narrowing. What can we do to help the blooming drupal administrator as he or she becomes a systems adminstrator or network systems administrator? How about release some modules.

TZO began experimenting with network tools on a drupal site during the lifecycle of D5, and we are deploying our updated Dynamic DNS site on D6. With DNS, Headers, Ping, Traceroute and Whois our five networking assistance tools based in part on work required by that site and as a result of our early experiments we will be advancing support for the network tech role.

With the network or site administrator in mind but a drupal developer or site designer in mind too they are built in the form of D6 modules and use common Curl and PEAR libraries for their networking components, making them drupal-easy to add to your site if this functionality is something you could use. For an installation walkthru and demonstration of them, and their development teardown if time permits, vote and attend for this session. I will introduce them one by one and demonstrate their methods and interfaces.

With more of this type of hosting structure expected next year, and at least as much being requested in job applications you could add these modules to your intranet, your support desk, your troubleshooting or faq pages, or just call them in secret to confirm your user's input about their domain config and extend your networking skills and capability.