Netformx's Network Designer, also sold as Cisco Network Designer, isn't just for taking inventory of an existing network or drawing pretty pictures. As its name suggests, it's a sophisticated tool that can help you design your network. Intended mainly for sales engineers, Network Designer can even remind you to include memory and software upgrades and print a bill of materials for your design.

Network Designer includes an extensive set of network device objects. Given Netformx's close relationship with Cisco, you can find an object for just about any Cisco device you might need, as well as most other common network equipment. Objects for discontinued devices even display a little red "EOL" symbol to indicate they have been designated "end of life."

Network Designer's unique features become apparent when you start designing a network. Once we dragged a switch or router from the device library to a drawing, the Network Designer configurator started. In the configurator, we specified the number of WAN, Ethernet and other ports needed on the selected device, then indicated software features, including protocols or security support, that we wanted. We selected the line for Fast Ethernet ports, and the configuration displayed the Fast Ethernet blades available for the selected router until we'd selected enough to satisfy our port requirements.

When we selected options that required other options -- for example, a WAN port daughter card that requires a motherboard -- the configurator prompted us to select one. It also identified mutually exclusive and otherwise incompatible options and, when needed, prompted us to include memory upgrades and software features to support the selected protocols. For example, when we tried to configure a Cisco router with the firewall feature set, we were reminded that additional memory was required to support that option. When we created a connection between devices, Network Designer prompted for the connection type and ports on the two devices.

Producing pretty pictures isn't Network Designer's strong point. Although connections between devices are color-coded to show the connection type, links are always represented as straight lines between the centers of the two devices. Image quality ranges from quite good, with both front and back views available for objects representing Cisco and other equipment, to merely generic for workstations and servers.

Netformx's DesignXpert (screen view) Click here to enlarge

For existing networks, Netformx's Enterprise AutoDiscovery, an extra-cost option, uses SNMP and ICMP (ping) to build a network map automatically with each subnet on a separate drawing page. For most devices that are in the Netformx device library, the discovered diagrams are accurate and complete, but a Cabletron Systems SmartSwitch 6000 on our test network fooled the autodiscover process. Each bridge card in the SmartSwitch chassis was configured with its own IP address, so the product assumed each was an independent Ethernet switch and mapped them as separate switches. Once our network was mapped we could search for devices by IP address, name or MAC (Media Access Control) address.

In fact, Network Designer is so good at what it does, we started getting greedy. Where the configuration wizard lets you set up a router, we wished for a version that would also help us choose the router chassis by enabling us to specify the set of ports and protocols we wanted and then displaying the routers that could satisfy that requirement.

Network Designer 3.0 Enterprise Edition with Enterprise AutoDiscovery, starts at $2,990; $4,495 with a one-year library update-service subscription and software support. Available: Now. Netformx, (888) 743-6769, (408) 355-2400; fax (408) 399-7553. www.netformx.com