user interface enabling an analyst to interact with displayed graphical entities representative of instances of data transport managed entity objects preferably a display interface 600 is presented to the analyst the display interface is divided in at least two view panes a first view pane 610 shows at least a selected portion of the data transport network 100 in accordance to a layer 3 representation thereof routers 130 steering data traffic onto the data transport path 128 are shown as well as the data path 128 itself a pipe tunnel spanned therebetween routers 130 represents the data transport path 128 routers 130 a and 130 b may either be implemented as stand alone physical data transport equipment or implemented in software firmware of a data transport node such as the virtual router 130 b in accordance to either implementation the routers 130 are associated with data transport nodes 102 in the data transport network 100 other nodes 102 bearing layer 3 ip addrs are shown as part of the network management solution and further provide a visual context for the routers 130 and data transport path 128 the data transport network 100 itself is a layer 3 entity to the extent that it has an ip network address 0 and may be displayed to provide a visual context the data service 400 provisioned over the layer 3 path 128 is not shown because it is a higher osi layer entity the service provider 412 and the service user 422 are not shown even though they are layer 3 entities by bearing ip addrs because these nodes are not typically in the realm of influence of the network management solution these layer 3 representations besides showing the routers 130 the end nodes 102 and the data.