Proportion of inbound traffic from a commerce provider to a large research university categorized by Autonomous System (AS) (from the Traffic2 program and HTML Report Generator)

Goals and Development Philosophy

CoralReef is a project of the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA). It evolved from a project that monitored the OC3mon and OC12mon activity of MCI. This work was based on measurement and analysis tools assessing active flows for Ethernet and FDDI, and was developed at SDSC under the NLANR (now NLANR MOAT) project. The earlier version of software that has been used for NLANR/MOAT activities is at http://moat.nlanr.net/Coral/Software.

The current version of CoralReef under the CAIDA project supports ATM and POS devices at OC3 and OC12 bandwidths on Intel-based workstations running FreeBSD or Linux, and standard network interfaces on most Unix-like systems via libpcap. Plans include development of an OC48mon monitor (development is continuing jointly with the University of Waikato and others under CAIDA's NGI project), and eventually an OC192mon monitor as well. The CoralReef suite also includes software for analysis of traces collected by these type of monitors.

CoralReef provides a set of drivers, libraries, utilities and analysis software for passive network measurement. The package includes many ready made solutions, but is still evolving. We expect to refine and greatly enhance CoralReef's functionality and ease of use in the near future. The CoralReef software is known to work under FreeBSD (2.7, 2.8, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.4), Linux (2.0.36, 2.2) and Solaris (2.5, 2.6), and is expected to work under most other Unix-like systems. The Apptel POINT and FORE ATM card drivers work only under FreeBSD; the DAG card is supported only under Linux. This release includes utilities that are under development. Feedback, requests and improvements would be greatly appreciated and can be sent to coral-info@caida.org.

The libcoral Library and API

Released in March 1999, CoralReef 3.0 marked a significant breakthrough in the evolution of the CoralReef suite. With version 3.0, the libcoral set of core monitoring libraries has become available. The libcoral library is the foundation upon which the entire CoralReef suite rests. CoralReef 3.0 does not, nor was it ever intended to represent a "plug and play" solution. However, this release made the libcoral library and its associated API available to developers, making it easier for them to develop traffic analysis software. Other components of CoralReef continue to undergo development and refinement.

It is hoped that the release of the libcoral library will encourage the research and professional community to use CoralReef to develop their own Internet traffic analysis tools. In keeping with this spirit, the CAIDA development team plans to use a more rapid, incremental development cycle. Your comments and constructive feedback on this effort would be greatly appreciated.

Animations

Animations are available depicting Coral monitors and Port and Protocol Analysis.