Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL:
http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail
About the Visualization
Visualization Techniques:
(Technique1): Configuration file specifies pixel location of
polygonal shapes: circle for each router, bar with half arrowhead for
each link.
Key Visualization Mappings:
(Mapping1):
11 core Abilene backbone routers are displayed geographically as
labeled circles:
STTL = Seattle, WA
SCRM = Sacramento, CA
LOSA = Los Angeles, CA
DENV = Denver, CO
KSCY = Kansas City, MO
HSTN = Houston, TX
IPLS = Indianapolis, IN
ATLA = Atlanta
WASH = Washington, D.C.
NYCM = New York City, NY
CLEV = Cleveland, OH
(Mapping2): Blue circle indicates router having active links.
Gray circle indicates no active links. Circle is also a hot link to MRTG graphs.
(Mapping3): Link line utilization is colored according to the displayed
key.
(Mapping4): Small box near each link indicates an absolute rate of
traffic in bytes/second.
(Mapping5): Black appearing on any link bar indicates network errors,
and grows logarithmically from base to tip, where the base represents
0.001 percent and the head represents 1 percent errors.
Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL:
http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail
Data
Data Sources:
(Source1) MRTG polls SNMP MIB of each monitored router
every five minutes for line utilization and network
errors on each router's attached links.
Data Specification:
(Data1) Five minute exponentially decaying sum of moving average
of input and output bits per second
(Data2) Percent of input and output packets in error or discarded at the router during each five-minute polling interval, multiplied by 1000.
Data Aggregation:
(Aggregate1): MRTG calculates average rate when available and
normalizes these to fit in a standard five minute time slot.
(Aggregate2): Error values can be calculated as an average of
a specified number of historical MRTG polled values.
Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL:
http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail
Evaluation
Strengths:
(Strength1): Color-coded, timestamped snapshots of router
traffic levels give quick indication of general backbone utilization
and health.
(Strength2):
Hot links to underlying MRTG graphs offer glimpses of more
specific trends and historical averages.
Issues:
(Issue1): Usefulness of display and statistics is limited to
cursory overview.
(Issue2): Position of router at SCRM has moved to SNVA. It is not
clear how changes in backbone configuration affect the utility of the
traffic status animations.
