Automated Network Diagramming and Documentation

Accurate and up-to-date infrastructure diagrams are essential for troubleshooting, regulatory compliance, planning, and change management. Many organizations rely on labor-intensive and error-prone manual processes to update diagrams. The level of effort required to maintain up-to-date inventory and accurate network diagrams continues to mount as networks become increasingly complex, dynamic, and virtualized.

OPNET’s NetMapper addresses this challenge by automatically generating up-to-date network maps and inventory reports. NetMapper’s intelligent analysis and reporting engine:

• Automatically discovers network elements and configuration. Continuous discovery captures all network changes.
• Creates high definition network diagrams by correlating configuration and operational data. 
• Understands multi-device relationships (e.g., HSRP, OSPF, BGP, VLANs, Spanning Tree) to generate detailed physical and logical diagrams.
• Archives diagrams to maintain historical information and track changes.

 

 

Benefits

• Dramatically reduce workload associated with maintaining up-to-date and accurate network diagrams and documentation.
• Maximize network availability by improving troubleshooting and change management processes with accurate and complete network visualization and documentation.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory and security standards, e.g., PCI•DSS, HIPAA, SOX Section 404 Documentation requirements, DISA STIG, and FFIEC IT Examination handbook.
  
• Enable ITIL best practices for change management by maintaining an up-to-date inventory of logical and physical dependencies and network changes.
• Minimize risk by modeling and visualizing proposed network changes prior to deployment in the production network.
• Verify successful deployment of network changes by comparing as-built against proposed diagrams.
• Reduce operational expenses and increase staff productivity.

 

 

Key Features

• Automatically discover network elements and create a high-definition network model leveraging configuration data, show commands, and SNMP.
• Uses the network mapping to generate physical and detailed logical views of the network, including: Layer 2/3, OSPF, EIGRP, VLANs, VPNs, BGP, HSRP/ VRRP, spanning tree, server and device virtualization, and more.
• Creates engineering-quality diagrams in Microsoft Visio^® and HTML format.
• Stores diagrams in a web-based central repository for easy access, sharing, and archiving of network change history.
• Embeds diagrams with troubleshooting information, including:
• Device configuration data.
• Diagnostic information (e.g., show command output, performance data).
• Administrative contact details.
• Contextual launch to device console.
• Highlights new and modified devices, and configuration changes since the last diagram generation.
• Provides interactive views, and hierarchical and role-based layouts.
• Supports the planning process by visualizing proposed changes.
• Tracks inventory of network assets, including hardware, software, protocols, and IP addresses.

 

 

For Service Providers

• Service-oriented diagrams showing L3 VPNs and L2 VPNs (VPWS/VPLS).
• Protocol-specific diagrams displaying MPLS and IS-IS topologies and configuration.
• BGP diagram showing neighbor relationships with internal and external peers and route reflectors.
• IPv6 topology diagrams showing v6/v4 translation tunnels.

 

 

Integrations

• Integration with nCompass for one-click contextual drill-down to physical and logical network diagrams.
• Integration with Network Planner to document proposed network designs.

Testimonials