Network Notepad is a free program for Windows that helps you create interactive network diagrams. It comes with a library of networking objects that you can use when creating the diagrams. It also offers even more downloadable library packages that contain many more objects for your diagrams. All the network objects in the diagram can be assigned not only labels but also IP addresses. In the diagram, you can right-click on any object and run various diagnostic tools like ping, telnet etc.
Network Notepad is available in two versions – professional version and free version. The professional version offers many features that are not available in the free version such as tabbed interface, better graphics, customized shapes, grouping and locking of networks, ability to rotate objects and texts etc. The professional version also has a much larger library containing improved graphics.
The free version of Network Notepad does not have a comprehensive library but for simple network diagrams it is enough. Some of graphics used in the library have been sourced from the public graphics available on the Cisco website. You can simply drag and drop the objects on the drawing pad, label them, change their properties like the IP address and connect them together using a link tool available in the toolbar.
You can link one diagram with another one. Actually you can link together multiple diagrams. This feature is useful if you have more than one diagrams belonging to various networks in different rooms, or areas of a building and you can join them to see how they work.
It allows you to run some external tools on any network object in one or connected diagrams. You can just right-click on a network object and choose tools like ping or telnet. If there is a web server interface available for that object, then you can even explore that web interface.
Network Notebook makes drawing network diagrams very easy. You can assign IP addresses to network objects and run diagnostic tools on them. You can save the diagrams, print them or export them as BMP image files.
You can download Network Notebook from http://www.networknotepad.com/.