Visio can create awesome looking network diagrams with cool pictures of your network equipment, however those pictures come at a cost; they consume valuable real-estate. As a result drawings are often cluttered with device specific information scattered all around the outsides of visual representations.
In the electrical engineering world we used lots of schematics; schematics didn’t waste valuable real-estate with actual pictures of the resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transformers, etc. Why? Because it was supposed to be a design & troubleshooting tool, not a flipp’n art & crafts project!
As an experiment try using geometric shapes, i.e. triangles, pentagons, octagons, hexagons, etc. to represent network devices.
- Use a geometric shape that matches the number of interconnecting interfaces, then label each inside corner of the shape with interface specific info.
- Use the remaining interior of the shape to record device specific information, i.e. hostname, IP/mask, serial number, firmware/software version, etc.
- Fill in geometric shapes with a color to identify the device type, i.e. red for firewalls, orange for IPS’s, blue for routers, green for switches, etc.
Whether or not you like the idea of using geometric shapes in your network drawings, at least consider putting the emphasis on creating useful schematics for design & troubleshooting; the quality and presentation of the data and the interconnects should always trump the artwork. Chances are anyone else using your drawings will also appreciate it.
Thanks to J. Scott Haugdahl’s for his book Network Analysis and Troubleshooting, it was from his book that I first got the idea of using geometric shapes in network drawings.
Tags: Networking
