The network drawing that answers back.

Design

Draw it like on a whiteboard, with the real thing behind every line. Any vendor, or none.

• Twenty-four kinds of devices, each with a drawing of its own
• Addresses on every router port and network card
• VLANs port by port, access and trunk, each named once for the whole project
• Static routes, with a backup for when the line goes down
• Firewall zones and ordered rules
• NAT towards the Internet, and port forwards for what is reached from it
• DHCP for what takes its address by itself, DNS to call a device by name
• Named areas behind groups of devices, and a note on any device

Ask

Ask in plain words: does this reach that? The packet is followed hop by hop, and the answer names the device that decided, and the port, the route or the rule it used.

From a panel with two menus, or from the built-in terminal: a small vendor-neutral command language, with no vendor syntax to remember.

Present

Put the editing tools away and show it to someone who was not in the room. Click two devices to ask a question, and watch the packet go.

Then break something, a cable or a device. You see at once whether the traffic finds another way, and which exchanges stop working. Nothing in the drawing changes.

When the meeting is over, hand the board over as a picture, PNG or SVG, with the question, the answer and what was broken written under it.