ERD for db defining a computer network

[Bob7]

I started out to whip up a personal-use database that would track computer network wall ports, network devices (mainly switches, potentially hubs, routers, and bridges) attached to them, and hosts (computers, network printers, etc.) My goals are: to easily find what is connected to what for network troubleshooting, host identification (when I'm given a report of an infected computer off a wall port, and where I may not have the MAC address yet in a database); and for bandwith planning. My initial thinking was that each wall port would connect to one uplink of a switch, each switch would have 0, 1, or many active downlink ports, and each active downlink port would have 1 host. Seemed simple enough, then the fun began.

1) I remembered that some hosts were connected directly to a wall port (no in-between switch, etc.).

2) A network device could have another downstream device (a cascaded switch, even though in practice I'm not doing that).

3) A wireless access point (WAP) has an indefinite number of downlinks, but this shouldn't be too hard to design I hope (using virtual downlink 'ports'). Note: since wireless hosts tend to move between WAPs, I'm not trying to show a relationship between WAPs and specific hosts, just to show that a wireless host has a potential uplink to an unspecified WAP.

4) Hosts can also be network devices, e.,g., an ethernet-connected host with a wireless card can serve as a WAP, so it is then both a host and a network device (a bridge, specificially). Should I simply represent it as two records, each depicting the specific role?

After review, I thought that although wall ports are simply extensions of downlinks of 'corporate' switches (in closets) that I don't have any control over, perhaps I should design the database so that a wall port instead is just considered a downlink port of another network device (switch in this case) -- and then I can have a field that contains the value of 'corporate' or 'departmental' responsibility.

I'm trying to define the entities, attributes, and relationships. Initially I was thinking that uplink and downlink ports would be attibutes of network devices, and uplink ports as attributes of hosts (unless a host should have a downlink attribute if serving as a WAP). My first go through is as follows:

network_devices - attributes (I'm only listing some of the important ones)

-device_id

-uplink_ports (1 or many)

-downlink_ports (1 or many)

hosts- attributes

-device_id

-uplink_ports (1 or many)

-(no downlink ports, unless I want one record of a host to depict it as a WAP)

Each uplink and downlink port of network devices and hosts is either inactive (a 0 relationship?) or is active (a 1 relationhip; not: 1, many). So for active connections there is a 1:1 relationship between a downlink port and an uplink port. For WAP downlinks, I think I should think of it as having potential multiple virtual ports, each connecting to only one host.

Any feedback in further defining the ERD would be very much appreciated. thanks

FileMaker Version: Dev 7

Platform: Mac OS X Panther

[Ender]

Welcome Bob!

Cool problem--though I wonder if it is worth all the effort it will require to populate and maintain the data.

Without having studied this problem in depth, this is how I would start. (See attachment.)

FileMaker Version: Dev 6

Platform: Mac OS X Panther