Interesting question, but is there a reason you do not post "your trouble image" so people can clearly see what is wrong? And the code - so they can use it and try to fix it. The more specific is the question the more specific help you will get. General questions inspire general advice.

Okey, but code is not full. As input: edges = {"824-3" <-> "205-11"} 2 style = { VertexShape->...image ommited..., VertexLabels->Placed["Name",{1/2,0.85}], ImageSize->1000 } Output: Graph[edges,style] Next I add labels by example at start, middle and end of line (sorry, can't fine documentation page - there is an example with positioning of 3's labels on graph's edge) and by experement understood, that node image intersect and covers labels at "start" and "end" of edge.

Format like this: node1,node2,p1,p2,10g node3,node4,p4,p8,1g means that node1's p1 connected to the node2's p2 with 10g link; node3's p4 connected to the node4's p8 with 1g link. And a lot of strings like this in file. File is generated by bash script by processing equipment's topology table (running configuration or other's) and can add there anything else, including Wolfram's operators and constructions.

I would not try to put to much text in this picture. The original you're showing is already crowded and when it's getting larger it will be useless.. Why not using colors for the "speed" of the edges. Eg 1Gb on black, 10Gb on red etc. What I've done a while back (lost the code :( ) is to create a list of node types. Then you can color the vertices according to the type (servers,routers,switches,core routers etc). The labels (MM9) was a bit though to get them readable due to the layout algorithms that MM uses.

Router and LAN visualization (graph)