Network Diagrams in ASCII Art

The RFCs that define the internet often use ASCII art to describe protocols. It always struck me as being like assembly code for diagrams. This week I came across a client using ASCII art in a JIRA custom field to document a network configuration for a bug. They even had a neat symbol for a wireless network:

AP))) (((User

I like the artist-mode in emacs for producing this kind of thing, though I suppose you could even write raw dot files for GraphViz since that's rather like Wiki markup. All feels a bit last millenium though?

~Matt