[IxDA Discuss] Browsing computers in a network management software

[Pierre Abel]

Hello,
Here is some thought from my experience with network management....

You rarely browse 100,000 computers..you don't want to do it because it 
is too complex....or perhaps it is nice for making demo (which can be 
sometimes an important use case to sell the product..in this case, the 
user is not an administrator but a selling guy!) In network management, 
there are several specialized tasks that allows to filter the set of 
computers and reduce the complexity (and then it is more simple to 
create a successful visualization)

For example, Monitoring (i.e checking the current state of the 
network)..here you can show only computers/links with problem (errors or 
warning to prevent future errors)...then you have to focus on how the 
user can easily understand where is the computer (to understand the 
gravity of the problem), and also provide tools to solve these problems.
Configuration is another task where you can have subtasks like adding a 
computers/removing one/updating/...the key is to find easily the place 
where the computers has to be configured, so you have to think of 
filters that allows administrators to find rapidly the desired subset of 
computers (for example subset of IP address or some text corresponding 
to the naming of network nodes ).Administrators know well their networks 
so give them good filters and it will help them to find what they want.

But sometimes  a global view is useful (e.g. to understand the network 
configuration). In this case, an overview that group the computers 
logically (ie as the administrators needs) with several level of 
hierarchy is welcome. Each level of hierarchy should be human readable 
(i.e not too much nodes). I tried several visualizations method (3d, 
standard tree) but I was not very happy with both. I feel that a simple 
2D display (nodes and links) where the nodes are placed automatically at 
bootstrap and then manually moved by the user as necessary, and that 
allows to navigate easily between level of details (e.g. by clicking on 
nodes) would be good but I never tested it...


Pierre


Ferran Alvarez - BRYTE wrote:
> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]
>
> Hello everyone,
>  
> I'm looking for models of navigation systems to browse/list/manage computers
> in a big global network (more than 100,000 computers).
>  
> I've seen NetSupport, ScriptLogic and Networkstreaming solutions but I'd
> like to know what do you think about this topic... Also could be useful if
> anyone know of a site where I could access network management UI guidelines.
>  
> Thank you,
>  
> Ferran Alvarez
> HYPERLINK "mailto:ferran.alvarez at bryte.biz"ferran.alvarez at bryte.biz |
> HYPERLINK "http://www.bryte.biz"www.bryte.biz
>  
>  
>  
>  
>
>