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Overview and Challenges |  | | Many companies provide telecommunications and data communications
infrastructure products, services, and equipment. Traditional applications
include those for network and systems design and management. However,
in recent years, with the growth of the Internet and deregulation
of the telecommunications industry, this area has flourished. There
are many new applications for service-level networking, quality
of service and provisioning, policy-based networking, network design
and documentation, and firewall and network security applications.
Further, there are offshoots in telephony and call centers, as well
as cable, wireless, and satellite networks, all of which rely on
network representation to some degree.
Companies that produce these types of applications are those most interested in
Tom Sawyer's technology.
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Tom Sawyer Software Solutions | | |
Technical Appropriateness
At the center of the management and presentation of most networking
applications is the network map. Our networking customers know that
Tom Sawyer provides superior products for network mapping, and many
network management companies are standardizing around our component
technology. Our technical approach is to support superior graph layout
for diagrams where edge direction is irrelevant, and to offer diagram-tailoring
features that are highly relevant to the networking industry.
The software is designed to detect and display bus, tree,
hierarchical, ring, parallel link, nested,
star and mesh topologies. These topologies are readily
portrayed with our scalable and mature technology.
Clustering Techniques
With the circular layout library, objects can be clustered together
into groups based on their IP addresses, group IDs, graph structure,
or other user-specified criteria. Users can set the minimum and maximum
number of network objects in a cluster and easily identify points
of network failure. The circular library produces drawings in which
clusters contain minimal inter-cluster connections. Understanding
the network structure enables designers or planners to proactively
design better networks and subsequently manage them more efficiently.
Network Diagramming Features
Tom Sawyer's technology supports comprehensive diagram linking and
navigation. Our technology includes extensions to support the calculation
of variably-sized nodes in support of Ethernet network drawing; comprehensive
support for IP clustering with subnet mask support; ring and star
detection and capable line crossing minimization. Further, Tom Sawyer
supports parallel line routing, which is required to visualize alternate
routings for load balancing and backup lines between different network
devices.
Structural Visualization
Both the circular and the symmetric layout libraries help system managers
unravel the backbone and peripheral structure of their networks, in
turn allowing them to interactively experiment with new designs for
greater efficiency. Our technology is used to automatically position
large bridge and router networks and is used in VLAN and other switched
network applications.
Incremental Line Routing
Fixed position is relevant when the elements of a network must be
placed at specific positions; for instance, where the positions might
represent cities on geographic maps. |
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Network Management
Tom Sawyer's circular, hierarchical, and symmetric libraries are
ideal for displaying network topologies.
- The circular library enables visualization of the points of
failure in networks through biconnected clustering.
- The symmetric library organizes
large networks into clear and well-balanced drawings.
- The hierarchical library provides
uniform distribution of nodes around Ethernet bus nodes.
Utilizing this technology, users can produce applications that
enable network managers to maintain an accurate view of their networks
at all times.
Device and Connection Labeling
Patented labeling algorithms
simultaneously position both object and line labels within a diagram
in support of industry needs to associate text with network devices
and connections.
Network management features of Tom Sawyer's technology include:
- Incremental layout
- Diagram navigation features
- Automatic edge labeling
- Folding
- Hiding
Some of our customers use our technology to draw networks with
more than one thousand routers, or to develop service-level and
connection analysis applications. Customers who use our topology
layout component software in their network management applications
include Check Point, Cisco, HP, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks,
Siemens Telecommunications and Veritas.
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