Network discovery and mapping

Sun Jun 22 06:58:39 UTC 2003

Its been a few years since I looked at network discovery and mapping
tools.  Openview/et al did the job, but was always a pain to move all
the boxes to the right spots on the resulting maps.

Has network discovery and mapping improved for medium-scale wide
area networks for ISPs (e.g. 1,000 networks, 100,000 network devices)?
I've found lots of discovery tools, but intelligent mapping/layout still
seems to be a problem. The usual requirements for SNMP smart discovery,
interface/subnet mapping, device identification and connecting the right
symbols with the right lines to all the other symbols.