  In the present article we substantially expand on our recent study about the
fabrication of mesoscale polymeric templates of disordered photonic network
materials. We present a detailed analysis and discussion of important technical
aspects related to the fabrication and characterization of these fascinating
materials. Compared to our initial report we were able to reduce the typical
structural length scale of the seed pattern from $a=3.3\mu m$ to $a=2\mu m$,
bringing it closer to the technologically relevant fiber-optic communications
wavelength range around $\lambda \sim 1.5 \mu m$. We have employed scanning
electron microscopy coupled with focused ion beam cutting to look inside the
bulk of the samples of different height. Moreover we demonstrate the use of
laser scanning confocal microscopy to assess the real space structure of the
samples fabricated by direct laser writing. We address in detail question about
scalability, finite size effects and geometrical distortions. We also study the
effect of the lithographic voxel shape, that is the ellipsoidal shape of the
laser pen used in the fabrication process. To this end we employ detailed
numerical modelling of the scattering function using a discrete dipole
approximation scheme.
