I have no idea if this is better than Visio but I found it to be quite useful. I diagrammed my home network as it will exist after I make a couple of machine swaps. There is one machine that’s not on the diagram that will be retired: it’s the entirely too slow machine that has been hosting this weblog and sundry other stuff for the past couple of years. It will be replaced by red, as shown in the diagram: this website will go from being hosted by a 233 MHz Pentium II with 64 Mb RAM to a 700 MHz Athlon with 256 Mb, to say nothing of the much faster drives and bus speed.
I have no idea if I chose the right networking symbols/colors, but I think the idea is clear enough.
Hmm, there’s one other system not shown: we do have a WinXP system that’s not powered on. Perhaps I’ll add that later. A steal from Boeing surplus — a 933 MHz Pentium III for $350, still in warranty from Dell.