back to article Network mapping: you know it makes sense

Keeping track of your network infrastructure is crucial to maintaining control, because you can’t expect to manage it without an understanding of what you have And since a picture is worth a thousand words, keeping a live map of the network makes it easier to see what’s going on when faults are detected or when change planning …

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  1. Sil_W
    Coat

    Mapping

    Almost entirely unrelated to the topic of the article, I know, but I remember once - back in the mists of the early Internet - having a little Windows program that used to map out my wanderings round the web and present me with a sort of atlas of the bit of the Internet I used.

    It was all stored in a local file, and it probably served no practical function except to give me pretty diagrams to look at... Wish I could remember what it was called. Anybody know if there's any similar toys out there today? If I type in 'Internet mapping' I just end up with (horrors) serious, network-management stuff I don't understand. :o)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      you mean like

      browsing history? ctrl+h in firefox.

      >ducks<

      1. Sil_W
        Badgers

        No, no, no...

        I think you missed the true superficiality of my requirements. I don't want a practical list of sites I've visited, sorted by date. I want *pretty pictures*, dammit.

  2. The Original Ash

    Hmmm

    I use TheDude. Free and functional.

  3. Kirbini
    Thumb Up

    Omnigraffle FTW

    A properly designed and managed network shouldn't need to be "discovered"; the drawings made up during the design process should easily suffice. For designing networks by drawing, nothing beats the speed and ease of Omnigraffle. It will also import/export Visio files. True, it is OSX only, but in my experience most network architects are using Macs these days anyway.

    That said, I do miss Visio's auto discovery feature. Saved my bacon more than once when trying to diagnose bailing wire and twine networks...

    1. Michael C
      Happy

      lol, dead right!

      ...but, I've been a consultant for more than 15 years, have worked with a hundred major clients, and been inside over a thousand networks. I've seen ONE, well designed and well documented network in that time. (and it only was because it basically "fell apart" and IT lost control, and then they later got hacked, so they built, from scratch, at great expense, a parallel network and moved everything into it).

      I can say the same thing about DR plans: the only people who have really good ones (not only planned, but tested) are those either required by law to do it, or who have suffered a costly loss because the didn't used to do it.

      networks have to be managed, very carefully, and by people who know what they're doing, and even more importantly, who can plan for things that don't exist yet and leave room for dramatic changes without impacting the core design. Things like that are as rare as well organized data centers.

  4. John Miles 1

    What about data driven diagrams (e.g. NetViz)

    I used to use a program called NetViz some years ago. The graphics and drawing capabilities were not great, and it was far too expensive. But you could very easily import and export attributes associated with Nodes and Links and cause the elements to change appearance & annotation depeding upon the value of attributes. You could export data associated with a diagram rather than just the 'appearance'.

    This made it very easy to generate large diagrams with lots of data/annotation without having to 'draw' it all by hand and to synchonise other systems with the data shown on the diagram. NetViz seems to have been dropped long ago by its supplier (CA), but I have yet to find a suitable replacement.

    Many of the 'diagramming' applications seem to be fancy drawing programs with a networking add-on. What I need is more of a data management program with a data driven diagramming add-on.

    Any ideas ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Data driven diagramming

      Have a look at GraphViz. It draws diagrams from data - in fact you can't draw diagrams without having the data. Also it's free. Downside is that you have to think hard in order to get the best from it.

      1. John Miles 1

        Data driven diagramming...

        Thanks for the GraphViz tip (I think it comes from something BellLabs/ATT did many years ago for graphs in Troff diagrams! ).

        Not exactly what I wanted but lead to the google directory page of graph drawing systems

        http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Math/Combinatorics/Software/Graph_Drawing/

        This led to "uDrawGraph" - Lacks quite a few features that NetViz had, but produces decent graphics has an API which could be useful.

  5. LizEM

    Maps from MyNet Toolset (free tool)

    MyNet detects all nodes in your local network and displays them on the graphical network map.

    http://www.adremsoft.com/mynettoolset/

    Alternatively, you may have a look at commercial network monitoring software called NetCrunch that includes auto-discovery of logical and physical network topology and auto-discovery of the routing map (30-day trial available)

    http://www.adremsoft.com/netcrunch/

    (disclosure: I am working at AdRem Software)

    1. NetAware

      Network Discovery, Mapping & Diagramming

      There are quite a number of tools that do pure network discovery. i.e discover the list of devices on the network.

      However, only a few of them can then automatically generate a network map or diagram based on the list of discovered devices.

      The article captures some of the network discovery tools. Other network mapping tools include codima's IT inventory toolbox, What's Up Gold, Castlerock's network manager and Solana Networks Smarthawk.

      These mapping tools come in all shapes and sizes.

      It is difficult to find network mapping tools that accurately map the routed and

      switched portions of the network, can do it fast and without putting much load

      on the network but some of those listed above as well as on this thread do

      a somewhat decent job.

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