ASCII diagram tells more than a full page of text

Before anyone can help you they need to understand you first. Below is an example why a single picture is worth more than than full page of text.

Problem

How long would it take to explain to somebody that:

• VLAN1 is used ONLY for inter VM communication
• VMs in VLAN2 and 3 are in isolated network segments that have internet access
• VMs in VLAN2 and 3 can talk to each other (using the FW as its default gateway to route traffic)

Solution

ASCII diagram:
                                               +---+------------+
                                               |   |            |
          ^                                    | v |------------|
          | internet                           | m |  vm2       |
          |                         vlan1      | 1 |------------|
      +---+---+         +-------+   vlan2      |   |  vm3       |
      | FW    | <-------|switch1| ------------ |----------------|
      +-------+   vlan3 +-------+   vlan3      |virt1 |virt2 |  |
                  vlan2     ^                  |switch|switch|  |
                            |                  |------+------+--|
                            |                  | Hypervisor1    |
                            | trunk            +----------------+
                            | vlan1
                            |
                            |
                            +
                       +-----------+  vlan1            
                       |aggregation|  vlan2    +-------------+
                       |-----------+<--------- | vm1 vm2     |
                       | switch    |  trunk    |-------------|
                       +-----------+           | Hypervisor2 |
                                               +-------------+

References

http://www.asciiflow.com/#Draw
http://www.streamwave.com/web-development/ascii-diagram-tools/
http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200911/ditaa_diagrams_through_ascii_art.html