The objective of this project is to better understand the behavior of IP protocols in large, wide-area networks that operate over a collection of switched connections. IP over ATM networks are an important member of this class of networks; other examples include protocols that use tunnels (which are, in a broad sense, "connections") such as multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), mobile IP, and virtual private networks (VPNs). As part of this project, the Network Computing Services, Inc. (NetworkCS) Advanced Networking Group developed software that displays the state of a wide-area IP/ATM network in real time. The visualization software presents information about both the configuration and state of the IP network, as well as about the underlying collection of connections upon which the IP network is built. In the case of IP/ATM networks, these underlying connections are ATM virtual channel connections (VCCs). Attributes of the network elements are also displayed, such as the utilization of a particular VCC.
The screen snapshot below is an example of the fine-grained, global display generated by the visualization software. This display was generated from data collected from a Midwestern university departmental IP/ATM network. It depicts the switches, hosts, and ATM connections (VCCs). Attributes of the VCCs, such as utilization or the time since creation, are encoded as colors; the user can control how and which attributes are encoded. Additional information is available via pop-up boxes.
Our real-time visualization software is running on several IP/ATM networks. You can run the visualization applet in your browser and view live, real-time data from the network shown above. The demo creates a new window that contains the visualization applet. You can manipulate the visualizationby , for example, dropping-and-dragging icons to rearrange the layout, or clicking on or hovering over network elements for additional information. To skip the documentation and go immediately to the visualization applet click here.
Please send us e-mail if you have problems with the visualization applet - we can't fix bugs unless we know about them. We also welcome your questions or comments about our project or software.
The visualization system is composed of two major components:
The two models of the network (one maintained within the Data Collection and Analysis Subsystem, the other within the Visualization Subsystem) are kept synchronized by messages (called "model updates") sent from the Data Collection Subsystem to the Visualization Subsystem.
The Visualization Subsystem typically runs as an applet within the user's browser. In this configuration, a standard Web server downloads the Visualization Subsystem applet to the user's browser. Because of restrictions imposed on applets by the Java Security Manager, a small helper utility runs on the Web server host and forwards TCP connections between the Data Collection Subsystem and the Visualization Subsystem applet.
The diagram below illustrates the relationship between the major components of the Real-Time Visualization system.
The visualization system is written completely in Java. The code compiles under Java 1.1 (which is important for creating applets), but works better when compiled under Java 2. The table below summarizes the implementation.
|
Subsystem |
Classes |
Source Lines |
|
Data Collection Subsystem |
42 |
10,777 |
|
Common Classes (network model) |
23 |
5,214 |
|
Visualization Subsystem |
53 |
17,843 |
|
Total |
118 |
33,825 |
This project includes two components: developing the visualization software and using the visualization system to explore the behavior of wide-are IP/ATM networks.
The first release of the software is available with a Berkeley-style license. It can be downloaded by following the links below.
We are deploying the visualization system on several IP/ATM networks. We hope to capture data from these networks that illustrate some of the anomalous events that motivated this project and that we have predicted
The software is available for downloading in Unix (.tar) and Windows (.zip) formats:
Docuemntation about this project is available:
Two recent presentations about this project are available:
This work is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the Next Generation Internet (NGI) program, contract number F30602-98-C-0211.
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http://www.networkvisualization.com/
Updated: 2000-09-14