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Towards a better network diagramming solution

Perhaps this is just the opinion of one person, but from what has been tested so far, all of the available solutions to diagram a network layout are seriously lacking in depth of substance. Networks themselves are more than just a series of connections, the interface the network communicates on possesses its own characteristic, so does the protocol it communicates, the number of interfaces per network, etc, etc…

A complete network diagram solution should possesses the ability to display these differences in detail graphically, rather than merely store the finer details as unviewable data. Furthermore, as network technology becomes more virtualized and abstract a complete diagramming solution should be able to represent this in a manner that is distinctly different that physical connections. Networking occurs as much on the internal level as it does on the external, that is, the networking that occurs internally on a system can be just as complex or even more complex than the network communication that occurs externally.

To accomplish some symbolance of a more complete network diagramming solution, it is not required to create a whole new markup language, but to simply take advantage of one already available. Examples of these are json, yaml, or even toml. Then all is required is the code to interpret the selected markup into a logically coherent graphical representation. As ascii art is superior in to other forms of artistic expression, the generation of graphical representation should, by nature, be in ascii.