Network topology

[Vicky]

Hi!
I need to draw network topology representation of network devices(router, switches etc) in my application. The devices will be represented as boxes and the links will be lines drawn from one box to the other. The user can add/remove the boxes and add/remove/modify the lines.
Can anybody help me?
Let me know about any site where I can find some help.

Thanks in advance.

Drawing a network topology is not trivial, particularly if you plan on dynamically generating the spatial topology based on data. I worked on a "proof of concept" project in the late '80s and we "proved" that the concept was untenable (at the time). Some of the lessons we learned were:

Be prepared for some heavy-duty graphic/mathematical algorithms. A great deal of PhD thesis paper has been spent on ways to dynamically generate a network topology, and they're not done yet. Regardless of which algorithm you use, be prepared for a lot of exception/error handling: we had a lot of difficulty dealing with unbalanced and circular topologies.

Separate the spatial layout (drawing) generation from the UI editing portion. Design some type of internal format/class system that is common to the entire system, but not tied to a particular UI. We ended up having one module generate a topology, a second verify that it was valid, and a third display it. This way we could trash and recode the generator without crippling the drawing UI (something we did a lot!) In the end we actually moved the generator to a mini-VAX because the PC just didn't have the horsepower to deal with a mid-sized topology.

Don't be afraid to ask the user for help: the person reviewing or modifying the topology may be the most knowledgable person available. Our system frequently required the user to "manually draw" topologies that were too complex or disjointed for our software to handle.

Hope this helps, and Good Luck! You've got quite a task ahead of you.

Cheers!
Humble Programmer
,,,^..^,,,
neusel@ntmail.eucom.mil