[AusNOG] Network Visualisation Tools, favourites? [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Jennifer Margrison]

I have to agree with Andrew, diagrams  don't scale well.  When you have 
more than eight or ten links into a node they don't help you much.  For 
the quick mud-map type of things that the OP seemed to be referring to, 
there are various types of visual shorthand  to represend large numbers of 
objects but to generate configs the diagram would have to be complete.


Jenny

(apologies for the  disclaimer)

> 
> Andrew Fort 
> 
> to:
> 
> Simon Knight
> 
> 19/09/2011 03:39 PM
> 
> Sent by:
> 
> <ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net>
> 
> Cc:
> 
> ausnog
> 
> On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Simon Knight <simon.knight at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> > yEd is a free diagram drawing tool, comparable to Omnigraffle or
> > Visio. After tracing over 200 network maps for our Topology Zoo
> > project, I prefer yEd whenever I have to use OmniGraffle for drawing
> > diagrams (and doesn't have the price tag)
> > http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_download.html
> >
> > On a related note, I am very interested in the requirements network
> > operators have for both network drawing and network visualisation
> > tools. Joel Obstfeld from Juniper spoke briefly about some of the
> > stuff we are doing at the University of Adelaide with regards to
> > network design and configuration. Our aim would be to take a network
> > diagram from something like yEd, Visio or Omnigraffle, and construct
> > the network configuration from this. We are part way into this process
> > - we can generate working configurations from a network diagram - and
> > would like to get some input from industry in terms of network design
> > and config tasks.
> 
> In my view, this sounds like a solution to the wrong problem.
> 
> Have the network database provision your network resources, build the
> config, and the diagrams.  Doing it the other way around seems to
> encourage divergence from your standards.
> 
> > Visualisation is also a key part of network operations, and is
> > something we are also interested in.
> >
> > Any feedback or input is welcomed - either on or off list.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Simon
> >
> >

> 
> -- 
> Andrew Fort (afort at choqolat.org)


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