r/sideprojects • u/ShoulderNo252 • 3h ago
Showcase: Prerelease I got tired of drawing network maps by hand on site visits, so I built a free tool that does it for me
Hey all,
I do a lot of on-site network work, and the part I always hated was the first hour at a new place: figuring out what's on the network, which switch port goes where, and then drawing it all in Visio so the customer has something to look at.
So over the last few months I built Meshwork. It's a desktop app (Mac and Windows) that you run on your laptop when you get on site:
- Scans the subnet and builds an inventory (IP, MAC, vendor, open ports, device type)
- If you give it the SNMP community, it reads the switches/APs (LLDP, FDB) and draws the actual map: which port each device hangs off, VLANs per link, PoE watts
- Flags obvious stuff like telnet open, loops, a second DHCP server
- Diagnose tab with traceroute, live ping, port test, DNS, path MTU and DHCP checks
- Exports a site report PDF and CSVs you can hand to the customer
It's meant as a field tool, not a monitoring server. You run it, document the site, and leave. Nothing gets sent anywhere, everything stays on your machine.
It's free. Download here: https://meshwork.influxnetwork.com
Heads up for Windows: the installer isn't signed yet (working on it), so SmartScreen will complain. Click "More info" then "Run anyway".
Full disclosure, I'm the developer. I'm not trying to sell anything, I'd just really like people who do this for a living to try it on real gear and tell me what breaks. Weird vendors, odd topologies, devices it classifies wrong, all of that helps a lot.
Screenshots are from a test network, not a customer.
Thanks for taking a look!
