Automated Network Mapping

What is network mapping?

Network mapping is the process of visualizing the elements on your network and how they’re connected. A network map is a graphical representation of your network depicting every device in your IT environment and acts as a schematic guide to your network. Network maps also display the relationships between the different elements of your network.

The two main types of maps are physical network maps and logical network maps.

1. A physical network map shows your network topology in a material sense, with its devices and the physical connections between them. You’ll find objects like ports, cables, racks, and servers.
2. A logical network map is more abstract and shows how data flows between the physical objects on your network. This includes subnets and subnet masks, IP addresses, routers, firewalls, voice gateways, and other network segments.

Physical and logical network maps depict the same environment from different perspectives and using both types of maps can help you get a comprehensive overview of your network.

How does network mapping work?

Network mapping is the process of visualizing the devices on your network, showing how they’re connected, and laying out how the overall network is structured. Admins can use this information to find out if their network is functioning properly, if a device is causing a problem, or simply if their network is organized as efficiently as it could be.

Network mapping works in part by discovering and displaying topologies. Network topologies refer to how different nodes, devices, and connections in your network are arranged in relation to each other. When you map a network, you’re visually representing its topology. Some of the most common topology types are bus, ring, tree, star, mesh, and hybrid.

Why is network mapping important?

Network mapping is important because it helps you gain a comprehensive and detailed view of your entire computing environment. As networks become increasingly diverse and complex, it becomes even more important to simply know where your objects are and how they work in relation to each other. Having your entire network at a glance makes operations more efficient.

Other benefits of network mapping include:

• Faster and more efficient troubleshooting: With bird’s-eye views, you can quickly pinpoint and investigate performance issues.
• Smarter capacity planning: You can use network mapping to plot out how expanding or changing the network would affect connections within your environment, helping you make data-driven decisions.
• Improved security: Network maps provide a snapshot of who’s connected to the network at any given time. If you discover a suspicious connection or IP address, you can quickly monitor or disconnect everything connected to it before it affects the entire network.

How does network mapping work in SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper (NTM)?

SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper (NTM) is a powerful, lightweight, and user-friendly automated network mapping solution designed to help you achieve unmatched visibility into your network. This automatic network map generator comes equipped with numerous features to automate the network mapping process and ease the burden on your team.

NTM automatically discovers the devices and servers on your network, and virtual machines, to create in-depth network maps that can automatically update as your network environment changes. NTM is also unique because it’s designed to support multiple discovery methods, including SNMP v1-v3, ICMP, WMI, CDP, VMware, and Hyper-V.

NTM can also help you demonstrate compliance with network mapping reports. Network maps are perfect for creating accurate inventories to show to auditors and the software itself is designed to be FIPS 140-2 compliant. With NTM, you have everything you need to create detailed network maps easier.