Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!sgi!rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com From: rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com (Rob Warnock) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: 9 interesting & challenging problems for Netman Message-ID: <70311@sgi.sgi.com> Date: 26 Sep 90 08:32:34 GMT References: <9009221327.AA25351@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Sender: news@sgi.sgi.com Reply-To: rpw3@sgi.com (Rob Warnock) Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 69 In article <9009221327.AA25351@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Z.Wang@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Zheng Wang) writes: +--------------- | I imagine what we need is a huge screen (as seen at some city | traffic control centers) with all the nodes and links. Each | connection is represented by a thin line. When traffic passes, | it leaves a trace on the line. So the more traffic passes, the darker | the line is.... +--------------- This is exactly what SGI's new "NetVisualyzer" product does, that is, the "netlook" program (one of the NetVisualyzer subsystems). [See it at Interop.] +--------------- | ... Different traffic can be represented by different | colors (eg. Yellow Page traffic is yellow :-) +--------------- Hmmm... Good idea. Except that we already use colors for "the more traffic passes, the [brighter] the line is". You can do most of the selective viewing by enabling/disabling filters for different traffic type, but I suppose there might be times when you'd want to see the ebb and flow of two different kinds of traffic... [Have to talk to the implementers...] +--------------- | We also need some buttons so we can choose to average the traffic | at different intervals. +--------------- Got that already ("rescaling interval" and "timeout interval" knobs). +--------------- | Yes, we need a camera to get a snap shoot from time to time. +--------------- Or just save the captured/displayed data in a log file? For later replay? [Got that.] +--------------- | With the visulization of the complete traffic, a human brain | can easily answer some of the 9 questions. +--------------- Yeah, and sometimes it's startling! The first time you see a "timed" update on your LAN, you say, "Wha' th' hell was thayet thayer?!?" [At least, I did... ;-} ] +--------------- | For a LAN, to collecting the data at a reasonable interval may | not be a problem. But for an Internet, we may have to put all the | snap shoots together to see the whole picture. +--------------- "NetVisualizer" lets you select a remote station to do the snooping, while displaying on the local system. [To be fair, I believe there are other products out there that support remote monitoring, too, though without the fancy graphics...] Still, that doesn't solve the problem completely for a large internet, since gathering the real-time data can itself become a significant traffic load. -Rob ----- Rob Warnock, MS-9U/510 rpw3@sgi.com rpw3@pei.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. (415)335-1673 Protocol Engines, Inc. 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94039-7311