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Combating Network Compliance with OPNET's Network Diagramming Solution

Network Diagramming

Network Diagramming Channel Feature

Combating Network Compliance with OPNET's Network Diagramming Solution

June 18, 2012
By Carrie Schmelkin
TMCnet Web Editor

When it comes to network compliance, the word “headache” might be a bit of an understatement. From meeting the various auditors’ compliance standards to producing up-to-the-minute network diagrams, addressing compliance standards is a daunting task for even the most experienced of network managers.


“Typically compliance standards are pretty high level and there are pretty stiff penalties for not complying with the standards,” Ankit Agarwal, associate vice president of engineering for OPNET Technologies’ (News - Alert) network diagramming solutions, told TMCnet. “Of course there are financial penalties and things like that, but more importantly companies are losing the confidence of the market when someone breaks in; that’s why the compliance standards came about.”

According to Agarwal, not only are companies expected to know what is in their network and what everything is connected to, but they are also required to produce up-to-date network diagrams which depict every device change, network configuration and core device.

Fortunately for network managers out there, OPNET Technologies’ flagship network performance solution NetMapper is touted for its automated network diagramming. OPNET’s NetMapper addresses the cumbersome challenge of maintaining up-to-date inventory and accurate network diagrams by automatically generating up-to-date infrastructure diagrams and inventory reports. NetMapper’s intelligent analysis and reporting engine: automatically discovers network elements and configuration; 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; and archives diagrams to maintain historical information and track changes.

“They say a picture says a thousand words and that’s absolutely true for networks,” Agarwal said. “The diagrams very quickly show you what’s in your network and how is it connected. It serves as a visual inventory and with NetMapper’s diagrams we have a lot of layout options.”

“The diagrams become really easy to use by the compliance auditors as well as they are very intuitive, they have a lot of rich information and very quickly they indicate to an auditor whether a company that is being audited for a particular compliance standard really has a handle on the diagrams,” he added. “With NetMapper, you get a very high level. They are accurate, they are timely, and they are generated on a daily basis.”

Since a lot of compliance standards require companies to be audited every three months, companies without automated network diagramming solutions may often find themselves scrambling days before the audit to put together all the diagrams and reports that are required. But, with NetMapper, organizations can automate the whole process and generate diagrams daily so that they are always ready.

NetMapper’s diagrams are extremely comprehensive, especially since they account for change management processes, or the fact that networks can change regularly. The solution highlights not only the new devices but the modified devices as well. This allows auditors to very quickly see where changes have been made.

When it comes to compliance, accuracy is paramount as you have to be “dot on with the network,” according to Agarwal. NetMapper is revered for its accuracy particularly because of its advanced discovery engine and that fact that it can generate up to 2,000 diagrams a day. The solution is also touted for its model driven analysis.

“A lot of other tools exist that don’t really build the model of the network; they don’t really understand the logical configuration of a device, and so they can do diagrams but they are pretty basic,” Agarwal said. “They will show you a device and show you what it is connected to but they can’t really do any of the advanced networking protocols that are configured on these devices.”

“With OPNET solutions, we combine the configuration information, we parcel that, and we build a very high fidelity model of the network,” he added. “Then, we combine the configuration information, which really reflects the intent of the end user, with the operational information of a device, which really reflects what is running out there. By combining the information into a model, we are able to give a much higher accuracy in our diagrams and we are able to not just do physical network diagrams but also logical diagrams showing how individual network protocols are configured and how the network is organized. That gives much more confidence to the auditors that the end user organizations really do have a handle on what is in their network.”




Edited by Rich Steeves


more on network diagramming…





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