PAM2000
1
Network Performance Visualization: Insight
Through Animation.
Brown J.A., McGregor A.J., Braun H-W
Abstract— In passive and active measurement
projects it is easy to generate large volumes of raw
data. Although this allows for detailed analysis, the
large volume is an impediment to understanding
the data and locating interesting events. One ap-
proach to this problem is to use visualization tools
to produce a graphical rendering of the data that
allows a user to explore the data “by eye.”
Cichlid is a visualization tool that provides high-
quality 3-D, animated visualizations of a wide range
of network analysis related data sets. Cichlid al-
lows the viewer to explore and interact with the
data sets in real time. It was designed with re-
mote data generation and machine independence in
mind; data is transmitted via TCP from any num-
ber of sources (data servers) to the visualization en-
gine (the client), which displays them concurrently.
Cichlid features real-time data display, point-
and-click user feedback, and dynamic data coloring
and labeling. Sequences of frames may be captured
for later encoding in a standard movie format and
single frames may be rendered at arbitrary resolu-
tions.
Using Cichlid has allowed us to gain new insights
into the data we collect and will, we feel sure, aid
others in the networking community, particularly
network providers, to more easily gain an overview
of the data that they collect.
Keywords— Network performance, visualization,
OpenGL.
I. Introduction
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an
animated visualization is worth a thousand static
graphs.
The National Laboratory for Applied Network
Research (NLANR)[1] has a number of network
measurement projects that produce large volumes
of data. These include the OCxMON Passive
J.A. Brown and H-W Braun are with the National Laboratory
of Applied Network Research (NLANR), San Diego Supercom-
puter Center, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA
Email:{jabrown,hwb}@nlanr.net
A.J. McGregor is with The Univ