Network Diagram Software: What Is It? What are the Options?
By Jason Sherman - January 23, 2019Are you ever confused about what the heck network diagram software is? Over the course of this blog, we talk a great deal about why it’s so important to document the network and to keep that documentation up-to-date. For us, the means to this end is our network diagram software netTerrain Logical ( there is…
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Network Documentation vs. Network Management Systems
By Fred Koh - December 9, 2018A few weeks back, I wrote about automated network documentation as a solution for sharing and collaborating vital network information between colleagues. In that blog, I mentioned that I’ve run into many organizations sharing spreadsheets and Visio diagrams using shared folders or SharePoint. For these organizations, the need for an automated network mapping solution such…
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Automated Network Documentation for Sharing & Collaboration
By Fred Koh - November 12, 2018These days, Visio and spreadsheets shared via a shared folder or via SharePoint seems to be what many of the people with whom I speak are using to document the network. Are you using Visio and/or spreadsheets to document the network? If so, how is this working out for your company? Being able to access…
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Tips for Pretty Network Diagrams: Links that Sing
By Jan Durnhofer - October 1, 2018In this final blog for our ‘Pretty Network Diagram’ series, we’ll focus on links. In netTerrain, links are not just black lines connecting two nodes: they can have styles, colors, thicknesses, can include bend points, and can also be arranged nicely when you have several links connecting the same endpoints. Link styles Links can include…
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Tips for Pretty Network Diagrams: Resizing and Decorating
By Jan Durnhofer -In our previous blog on ‘pretty network diagrams’, we discussed alignment and arrangement of objects on your diagrams. Here, we will expand the concept a little further so you can take advantage of some cool features in netTerrain to make your IT documentation sing. Resizing objects in bulk The last thing you want to end…
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Tips for Pretty Network Diagrams: Fast Alignment and Arrangements
By Jan Durnhofer -When it comes to doing less manual work, automation and discovery are great: just bring in devices, links, ports, and more into netTerrain and let the machine do the work. We’ve talked about this in great detail in previous blogs — and about how you can automatically position of the objects that you import automatically:…
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Music to Listen to While Documenting Your Network (Jan’s Take)
By Jan Durnhofer - September 27, 2018I think my colleague Jason wrote something about this in his own blog….well, I am no less of a music freak. I am, after all, the proud owner of close to 15,000 vinyl records (you read that right, no extra zeros there). 10,000 of those are catalogued on Discogs, by the way (check it out)….
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Improve Network Documentation with Device Card Modeling – Part Two
By Jan Durnhofer - September 24, 2018Welcome back. In the previous blog, we drilled into some of the uses for device cards for your network documentation or Data Center Infrastructure initiatives. In this blog, we will go over the actual modeling process of cards in the catalog. We try to keep our blogs vendor-neutral — however, here we are talking about…
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Improve Network Documentation with Device Card Modeling – Part One
By Jan Durnhofer -Devices come in different shapes and sizes. When they are big, they can be ‘modular’ which means that they have so-called slots and cards. If you need to document your network with such devices, your IT documentation system should have the capability and granularity to model these slots and cards. In previous blogs, we’ve discussed…
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How to Create a Network Diagram
By Hannah Ash - September 11, 2018Network diagrams are a visual tool that give network administrators a window into the network: they are used to visualize objects/nodes, connections, dependencies, critical paths, tasks, and more. Because networks are complex, there are different types of network diagrams to deliver various types of information. Step 1: Understand the Types of Network Diagrams basic network…
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What is a Logical Network Diagram?
By Hannah Ash - September 5, 2018Network diagrams that visualize your topology, both logical and physical, are key to effective network and IT infrastructure management. With up-to-date diagrams, network admins can troubleshoot (and minimize downtime), plan for capacity, avoid IT clutter, maintain software, and keep the network secure and compliant. There are two main types of network diagrams: physical and logical….
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Physical Network Diagrams Explained
By Hannah Ash - August 30, 2018When it comes to maintaining and managing an IT infrastructure, network diagrams are critical to compliance, security, troubleshooting, and minimizing downtime. Network diagrams, or maps, are visuals that use symbols/icons/shapes to depict the different objects and connections in a network. Depending upon what you need to document, you may will probably have different types of…
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