[kichuku]

I am a network engineer for a medium size company (I have worked for very large enterprises too) and there a a lot of opportunities for startups in network engineering.

1)Simple network automation platform that works for "My" custom environment, simply and effortlessly and also it should not break any existing network. (I don't mean like HP Network Automation)

2) Network diagram software - Seriously, any experienced network engineer will agree that this one needs a lot of disruption. Visio is very expensive and even then it is a pain to use. And Lucidchart or Cacoo or draw.io or other online tools too have their flaws/drawbacks.

3)Network monitoring tools - It is a pity that CA Spectrum, which is a ugly and non user-friendly tool, in my opinion, is among the most used network monitoring software. Network monitoring tools are bread and butter of NOC (Network Operation Center) teams.

4) Network devices configuration management tool and Change and topology visualization tool - Netbrain seemed promising in the start. But it seems to do too many things and has still room for improvement.

It is high time that more and more programmers should start building and contributing in network engineering field. There are numerous tools for each and every function. But there is lot of room for improvement in making those tools more elegant, easier to use and more reliable.

Yes, there is Software Defined Networking (SDN) where the vendors (Cisco, Silverpeak, Riverbed etc) themselves provide a nice visual dashboard. But the current "non-SDN" devices are going to stay for quite some time. And also why do we need to depend on one vendor and hence the Vendor provided dashboard? There will always be customers who would want vendor agnostic architecture and common tools to manage the infrastructure.

Note: A lot of the current tools (especially the ones I have mentioned above) do work very well and are used by large enterprises for a reason. But Tesla did disrupt the market of cars in its own way when reliable Toyotas and fast Ferraris already existed.

[irundebian]

I'm not a network engineer, rather a security-focused guy, and I'm also very interested in this topic because the basis for a secure network is a well managed network without any unknown/undocumented assets (network equipment incl. layer 2 as well as network participants). Few months ago I attended a talk of Ivan Pepelnjak, the author of a network engineering blog called ipspace. He talked a lot on network automation and enumerated some success story. I remember he talked about people setting up several data centers in a relatively short amount of time by using a lot of network automation / configuration management.

http://blog.ipspace.net/2018/03/presentation-and-video-real-...

[screye]

> Network diagram software - Seriously, any experienced network engineer will agree that this one needs a lot of disruption. Visio is very expensive and even then it is a pain to use. And Lucidchart or Cacoo or draw.io or other online tools too have their flaws/drawbacks.

I have been trying to find time to do exactly this. Have a plan laid out, but as is a popular quote : 'ideas are useless in and of themselves'.

Will post it here, should I ever realize my idea.

[kakwa_]

for 2) did you try yEd? https://www.yworks.com/products/yed

[Something1234]

Dia, the diagram editor, seems pretty decent for diagramming. It has the CISCO symbols built right into it, and it's free.