Having one tool that can do more than one thing means that much less that you have to carry.
Being in IT doesn’t always mean that you will only be working with routers or switches. At other times, you may deal with a firewall or troubleshooting why you are having problems with accessing a mainframe or minicomputer. One of the tasks that it seems that I need to do the most but isn’t very high on my list is documenting the network. A tool that just about everyone has can help you with that task.
Sometimes you need to be in more than one place or troubleshoot a problem and looking at it from more than one point of view. With tools such as RDP, VNC, and SSH to mention just a few of the possibilities of how you can look at a problem whether you are temporarily taking control of another device on the network or if you want to check to see what your Android device is seeing from where it is connected to the network.
Bluetooth is another area where more devices are starting to use it and the tools to help find the cause for a problem don’t alway keep pace. Whether you want to make sure that only certain device can see each other or making sure that when a Bluetooth device says it is “available” for pairing that it is actually being seen by other devices.
Keeping your network in time sync is becoming more an more important. Verifying that your GPS based time receiver is actually seeing the satellite and is getting a time signal is another way your Android device can help isolate a problem. Temporarily making it into a NTP server when certain devices aren’t acting on a NTP packet can help you see if it is related to the time source you are using.
These are just a few of the ways your android device can help you in your daily list of things todo without having to buy additional equipment, at least as quickly as you may have had to do in this past.
NOTE: This eBook was revised on 10/29/14 with additions involving the OnePlus One and other apps that I didnt get in the initial release.