I am currently designing an interface for a network device, which needs to be configured by network admins. They are able to change the network settings (IP, subnet, gateway, dns), which got me thinking. After having configured countless devices, I am weary of having to enter the same stuff everytime.
So I built in some JS to make predictions. Assume we get the IP adress 192.168.1.55
. We now know:
- The subnet mask is most likely
255.255.255.0
. - The default gateway must be somewhere in
192.168.1
. - The dns server is most likely somewhere in
192.168.1
.
So after the user has provided the IP adress, I fill the other three fields with these values (the gateway and dns fields receive just 192.168.1.
). If needed, the user can adapt the values.
My question is: Is that too much? Do professionals (target audience here) feel patronized with this approach? Or should I go even further and warn the user if he entered a mathematically wrong value (maybe 255.255.255.248
as the subnet mask and 192.168.25.4
as the gateway)?