A detailed network documentation file will save your time while facing urgent challenges and will increase your productivity in network updates, network troubleshooting and network discovery. So you need accurate and complete documentation of a network before you start your network management administration.
Standard network documentation includes these typical components: Devices info, network topology, network performance record, etc. In most of enterprise, several network engineers will be assigned to prepare all the documents and fresh them periodically. Based on my experience, the document work is tough and sometimes seems impossible to keep all the paper documents up to date.
The smart way to overcome the difficulty is to find a right tool and try to automate some work. Most people like Microsoft Visio which is good at static network diagram. However, if you are working for a big network which will be updated frequently, Microsoft Visio proved to be far from perfect. NetBrain seams to be more powerful when meet the tough need. NetBrain Operator Edition is dynamic network diagram software and good at automated network diagram and visual network troubleshooting.
Actually, no tool can beat all challenges, may be one tool will overcome one challenge successfully, howerver, fail to overcome another challenge at the same time; you need to spend your time and compare different tools by yourself. I would like to visit some relevant forums and see what other tools are recommended by other network engineers or try to search in Google. For example, type in the phrase Automate Network Diagram, then hit Search; I will get what I want soon.
