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The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis
Internet Atlas Gallery

Layout Showing the Major ISPs

Bill Cheswick, Bell Labs and Hal Burch, CMU
Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Innovations
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Computer Science Dept.
URL: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/ches/map/gallery/index.html

Visualization Thumbnail About the Visualization
Visualization Techniques:
(Technique1): Graph layout treats data as a physical system and finds the set of node positions that minimizes the total energy. Any two nodes that do not share an edge are connected, via infinite strings, to a spring. If the nodes are further apart than the spring's resting length, no force is applied. If the nodes are closer than the spring's resting length, the spring is compressed and the nodes are pushed apart. Minimum total energy is found using a gradient descent algorithm.
(Technique2): Graph layout occurs one layer at a time starting with closest links, and then adding one hop at a time.
(Technique3): A decision is made whether to show all the paths or just the minimum distance spanning tree (considering only the shortest path to each destination).
Key Visualization Mappings:
(Mapping1): Color groups each ISP. (Layout can be colored in many ways: geographic region, network capacity, distance from test host, IP address, etc.)
Visualization Tools:
(Tool1) Standard Unix text filters.
(Tool2): Proprietary graph layout and mapping program.
Full-Size Visualization Back
  Last Modified: Mon May-19-2008 12:16:41 PDT
  Page URL: http://www.caida.org/projects/internetatlas/gallery/ches/visual.xml