How To: Network Diagrams with Visio & Spreadsheets

How To: Network Diagrams with Visio & Spreadsheets

By - June 12, 2018

If you’re a network engineer trying to manage the network — without automated network diagramming software — let me tip my hat to you: you’re probably better qualified than I am to write the introduction to this blog. Network engineers everywhere know, all too well, the pain of troubleshooting, fixing network outages and issues when…

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Manage Your Outside Plant with Dynamic Maps: Importing KML / KMZ maps

Manage Your Outside Plant with Dynamic Maps: Importing KML / KMZ maps

By - June 8, 2018

In this blog, the 5th installment to our series on managing your outside plant with dynamic maps, we’ll show how you can bring existing outside plant data into netTerrain. If you already have outside plant data in Google Earth (or another tool that supports exports to KML or KMZ formats), you can leverage this data…

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Automagic Calculations for DCIM, OSP, and Network Mapping

Automagic Calculations for DCIM, OSP, and Network Mapping

By - June 7, 2018

In this blog on automatic calculations (using our DCIM, outside plant, and network diagramming software), we’ll review what we call ‘expressions’ in netTerrain. Expressions are functions you can create in netTerrain using transact SQL to compute or aggregate any sort of scale or value — and retrieve it in a property. You may want to…

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The Totally Biased Guide to Documenting Your Network: What Can Be Documented?

The Totally Biased Guide to Documenting Your Network: What Can Be Documented?

By - June 5, 2018

Now that you’ve identified what it is that you actually need to document, let’s dive into the details….aka what does that look like in your brain? Imagine you have a crystal ball and look into the future: what does your documentation look like. By ‘future’ I mean that you should set a realistic timeline —…

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Manage Your Outside Plant: Tracing Circuits

Manage Your Outside Plant: Tracing Circuits

By - June 4, 2018

In this 4th segment (and video) of our series on managing your outside plant with dynamic maps, you will learn to trace a cable in our outside plant software netTerrain. In the previous segments in this OSP series, you learned how to: create a map in netTerrain OSP software, how to add objects to it…

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Why Big DCIM Vendors Have a Big ROI Problem

Why Big DCIM Vendors Have a Big ROI Problem

By - May 31, 2018

Regardless of how much large software vendors may want it to be otherwise, DCIM, aka data center infrastructure management software, isn’t — by its very nature — a one-size-fits-all solution. It can function across a number of different data center functions. Don’t just take my word for it: ask ten DCIM vendors to define exactly…

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How to Reserve Resources in DCIM, Network Documentation, & OSP

How to Reserve Resources in DCIM, Network Documentation, & OSP

By - May 30, 2018

In this blog, and accompanying video, you’ll learn how to reserve resources in netTerrain. Time and time again, we’ve seen countless situations in which our customers need to reserve a resource in netTerrain without making it active — while still being able to see the resource reserve reflected in the diagrams. Maybe a user wants…

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Manage Your Outside Plant: Mapping Fiber Strands in a Splice Box

Manage Your Outside Plant: Mapping Fiber Strands in a Splice Box

By - May 29, 2018

In this article and video, the third segment in our series on managing your outside plant with dynamic maps, you will learn how to apply netTerrain OSP to a very common scenario in GPON network mapping and fiber documentation: creating fiber strands and mapping them to a duct (you can click here to watch the…

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How to Keep Your Network Diagram Project Right-Sized

How to Keep Your Network Diagram Project Right-Sized

By - May 17, 2018

When it comes to mapping and diagramming the network, is there such a thing as inviting ‘too many people to the party’? Of course, it’s always more fun to invite others to your (network documentation) party…and, of course, sometimes you have to. Sometimes, however, it is more effective to start small and do just what…

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Manage Your Outside Plant with Dynamic Maps: Manholes, Conduits, Ducts

Manage Your Outside Plant with Dynamic Maps: Manholes, Conduits, Ducts

By - May 14, 2018

Welcome back to our series on managing your outside plant with dynamic maps: in this second installment in the series, you’ll learn how to place manholes, conduits, and ducts within your outside plant diagrams. In the introduction to this series, you got an overview of how you can create maps in netTerrain. To recap, these…

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The Totally Biased Guide to Documenting Your Network: Want & Need

The Totally Biased Guide to Documenting Your Network: Want & Need

By - May 11, 2018

In the first installment in this series, we discussed whether or not you have pain. If you’re still reading, you probably determined that you do, indeed, have some very real pain points that you want to solve with automated network mapping and documentation. Your next step, then, is to define what you want to do…vs….

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Totally Biased Guide to Documenting Your Network

Totally Biased Guide to Documenting Your Network

By - April 27, 2018

Here at Graphical Networks, we see it every day: automatic network documentation and diagramming makes life easier for our customers. With automation, users can fix network outages faster, troubleshoot issues quickly, reduce expenditure on unnecessary IT stuff, and save time and resources managing changes to the network. If you’re considering making the jump from no…

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