Network Whiteboard

Being the administrator of a large network means you always need to know the status, and availability of every device. One thing to help in this regard is a plan, or mockup of the entire network. With this in mind, Network Whiteboard allows you to map out all elements of a network in a fresh, intuitive environment.

Before the application can perfectly function, your computer needs to be fitted with .NET Framework, because it’s a mandatory requirement. Sure enough, it’s probably already there, letting you quickly check out the set of features.

Although related to networks, the application is merely a tweaked pain tool, with no required info over the web, or the network itself. Most of the window space represents your canvas, with a couple of tabs to easily select different types of components, as well as several drawing tools, which can be fully customized.

Elements are placed on the canvas through drag and drop. These are found in dedicated tabs, with a slim toolbar enlisting them. Found in networking, and computers, there are various different icons for servers, routers, switches, Wi-Fi hotspots, tablets, laptops, and more to represent your network as accurately as possible.

Apart from objects, drawing is also an option. With either a pen or highlighter, you can draw freely, or straight lines. Both drawing tools can be fully customized in terms of transparency, head shape, color, as well as size, with a test pad at your disposal to make fine tuning a lot more efficient.

The application can also make use of external pictures. These can either be used as objects, or background from the paper menu. It would have been useful to see a layer manager, especially since the selected object is brought to the top layer.

View options can be used to customize the canvas. A different color can’t be picked, but this can be bypassed with the image option. Moreover, several presets can be used to enable grid types of different size specifications, and preset sections. When done, the layout can be saved as image.

Bottom line is that Network Whiteboard is a handy application for creating a simple plan of your network. The overall process is intuitive, especially because of the drawing methods and tools. Even though there’s not a lot of variety when it comes to preset objects, support for external pictures is sure to fill in the gap.