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Mapping for Interface and Physical N 2 Diagrams

On these N 2 diagrams, the child components are shown on the main diagonal forming an N x N matrix of cells. Connections – either logical interfaces or physical links – that connect a pair of components are shown on the off-diagonal. Since the diagram focuses on physical connection as opposed to directionality, there are no arrows shown on the diagram. Instead, the diagram simply represents who is connected to whom. The lack of directionality means that half of the off-diagonal locations are redundant. If A is connected to B, we know that B is connected to A. Rather than showing this information twice, only the upper half of the diagram is used. The lower off-diagonal cells will be empty by definition. As with the functional N 2 diagram, you can manually change the order of the components on the diagonal. This can be useful for clustering analysis. It is the raw simplicity and the clustering analysis that is the primary value of the interface and physical N 2 diagrams.

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