On 02/08/2012 02:29 PM, Daniel C. wrote: > Hey all, > > I'm taking a class on data visualization. For my final project I plan > to write a piece of software that will create a visualization of > network traffic. Ideally, this will be something that's genuinely > useful to network admins. To get started, I've got a few questions: > > - What problems do you have that a visualization tool could help > solve? Are they fairly concrete (i.e. "I need to monitor all traffic > to port X on machines Y-AF") or something more... heuristic (for lack > of a better word), such as keeping an eye on overall traffic trends > and using your experience in looking at the pretty pictures to spot > when something unusual is happening?
I've got the tools to see what's happening at any point in time, but I would love to be able to compare graphs. How does this week compare to 12 weeks ago or last year? How do these 5 circuit compare to each other? How quickly are they growing, both compared to themselves and others? I can give you a specific example that happened just this week. One of my circuits went from 35mbps to 15mbps due to a traffic adjustment of my peer. It took a week before my coworker discovered the change and we were able to rearrange our bandwidth to compensate. While it's true we could have done a better job of watching all those graphs, having a tool that would highlight those sort of changes would be ever so helpful. Corey /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
