Design Tools for Large Networks

The Atlas TDAQ network consists of four separate networks which together total over 8000 ports at 1 Gbit/s, 60 ports at 10 Gbit/s, 200 Ethernet switches at the edge of the network, 6 multi-blade chassis switches at the core and over 20 km of copper and fiber cabling. The NetDesign suite was developed to provide a comprehensive set of tools that permits the generation of a navigable network design, automates a number of routine tasks and provides the user with a powerful and flexible reporting system. NetDesign is an add-on extension to the basic functionality of the Microsoft Visio tool. It features: automatic labeling of cables, media/port connection validation, navigation along a cable, hierarchical schematics, cross-page and vertical navigation, overall verification of the network diagram and hyperlinks to other equipment databases. The internal network structure can be exported to a third party database from which a large variety of reports can be obtained. The reports are defined using a special user-friendly meta-language and are written to a Microsoft Excel sheet. The database representation can also be used for consistency checks with the other ATLAS equipment data repositories.