Design Tools for Large Networks

The Atlas TDAQ network consists of four separate networks which together total over 4000 ports at 1Gb/s, 40 ports at 10Gbps, 200 Ethernet switches at the edge of the network, 6 multiblade 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 design tools that permits the generation of a navigable circuit design, automates a number of routine tasks and provides the user with a powerful and flexible reporting system. Netdesign is an addon extension to the basic functionality of the Microsoft Visio CAD tool. It features: automatic labeling of cables, media / port connection validation, navigation along a cable, schematic hierarchical, cross-page and vertical navigation, overall verification of network diagram and hyperlinks to other equipment databases. The internal network structure can be exported to a 3rd party database from which a user-friendly meta-language is used to process a large variety of reports on the network design, which are then written to a Microsoft Excel sheet. The database representation is also used for consistency checks with the other ATLAS equipment data repositories.