VizWorld.com

Anyone who’s ever done graph visualization has at one point or another run into the dreaded “Hairball” : Where the sheer number of connections overwhelms the data leading to a giant solid blot of connecting lines, obscuring anything useful.  Robert Kosara has a short discussion of the problem and a few solutions to it such as PivotGraph and Parallel Sets.

For a while now, people in visualization have talked about the graph without the graph, i.e., graph visualization without the hairballs. Networks are clearly important and challenging data, and it seems a bit myopic to only look at node-link visualization. Node quilts and the PivotGraph represent promising steps into a very different direction. While they require more work to understand and are more limited in what they can be used for, they are also much directed towards a goal than just showing all of the data. I think that this kind of thinking will lead us to much more interesting techniques in the future than trying to teach the old node-link diagram new tricks.

via Graphs Beyond the Hairball | eagereyes.

Science graph, network

LinkedIn, the Facebook of Work contacts, has created a great new interactive visualization tool for your network, automatically grouping your contacts into areas by similar contacts and allowing you to browse the connections between them.  From Mashable’s description:

InMaps is an insight into who the major connections, bridges and influencers are in your network. People with bigger dots and their names in larger fonts have more connections (and typically more sway) in specific clusters. Perhaps that’s why my friend Neal Sales-Griffin, the former president of Northwestern’s student body, is so prominent in my professional graph.

The image above is my network, which you can view yourself at this shared link. The layout and grouping is done automatically, although you then enter your own titles for the groups.

via LinkedIn InMaps Visualizes Your Entire Business Network.

Science interactive, linkedin, network

Courtesy of Indiana University.

Indiana University just won the Internet2 Driving Exemplary Applications (IDEA) award for their “Worldview” networking monitoring and visualization tool.  The tool monitors over 3,300 interconnects between 1,700 switching devices across various networks, and provides a highly sophisticated multi-touch visualization interface to analyze the data.

Wheeler said users have already imagined numerous ideas for other applications and additional data layers. For instance, Worldview can be used to track the impact of the nation's broadband stimulus projects, overlaying collected census block data to show unserved and underserved areas and how those areas change over time as broadband becomes more pervasive.

via IU’s GlobalNOC honored by Internet2 for Worldview real-time viusalization tool: IU News Room: Indiana University.

Science award, internet2, network

Plixer International has just released the latest version of their networking traffic monitoring and analysis tools named Scrutinizer 7.5.  This new version adds some interesting new visualization methods such as ‘The Matrix”, a circular graphical view showiing communication between network nodes, and integration with Google Maps for interesting geographical plots of traffic.

“As companies grow increasingly dependent on ever-growing and complex IT infrastructure to conduct business and remain competitive in the global marketplace, they must keep the network traffic flowing smoothly and without delay,” Patterson said. “Scrutinizer provides a window into network data flow that helps identify bottlenecks and weaknesses before they happen and prevent a potentially crippling failure.”

See the full press release and some additional screenshots after the break.

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Science network, visualization

The National Science Foundation has just connected India, Singapore, Vietnam, and Egypt to the “Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development” (GLORIAD), a dedicated fiber-optic network for high-speed large-bandwidth communication.

Among other uses, the network is employed to remotely operate telescopes and microscopes. It’s particularly useful for data-intensive visualizations. Researchers can carve out portions of the network for specific, uninterrupted long-distance collaborations that might include a lot of video conferencing and other intensive data exchange.

“Science is increasingly data-driven and collaborative, and does not respect national borders,” said Ed Seidel, acting assistant director of NSF’s Math and the Physical Sciences Directorate. “High-speed optical networks are critical to both national and international scientific efforts.”

This takes the US-China network from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps, a 4x increase in bandwidth.

via High-Speed ‘Other’ Internet Goes Global – Yahoo! News.

Hardware, Science network, nsf

Anyone working in Data Analysis and Visualization will tell you that the #1 problem facing them is file storage.  As the datasets get bigger and bigger, moving them from the HPC’s to the Visualization Resources becomes a bigger pain.  Oak Ridge National Labs has been facing this problem for a while now, and has just recently stood up a distributed fileserver named ‘Spider’ to fix this.

Once a project ran an application on Jaguar, it then had to move the data to the Lens visualization platform for analysis. Any problem encountered along the way would necessitate that the cumbersome process be repeated. With Spider connected to both Jaguar and Lens, however, this headache is avoided. “You can think of it as eliminating islands of data. Instead of having to multiply file systems all within the NCCS, one for each of our simulation platforms, we have a single file system that is available anywhere. If you are using extremely large data sets on the order of 200 terabytes, it could save you hours and hours.”

While this is nice, it still doesn’t solve the problem of then maintaining that data in Memory.  But at least you don’t have to spend a month waiting on an FTP to finish anymore.

Update:  I spoke with a source at ORNL, and they corrected a few things:

• Spider isn’t new, it’s been around for at least a year.
• It’s 10.7 PetaBytes
• They don’t use FTP, they use SCP & HSI

So if it’s not new, why the press release?  Not really sure to be honest.  Suspicions are it’s because it was previously in a testing mode, but has just officially entered “production” and general availability.

via HPCwire: Spider Up and Spinning Connections to All Computing Platforms at ORNL.

Hardware, Science data, network, ornl, storage

The recent government DDoS, suspected of originating from Korea, has been hot news lately but the vague sensationalist comments appearing the media make it difficult to know the actual scale of the problem.  ShadowServer aims to correct this by providing up-to-date visualizations of botnets and DDoS attacks through simple graphs that track historical activity over daily, monthly, and annual graphs.  Shown above is the most recent chart of the weekly DDOS activity, with the huge spike on Thursday.  Many more charts are available on their site.

ShadowServer DDOS Charts via Security Fix – Washington Post, White House, FAA, DoD, Others, Targeted in Online Attack.

Science ddos, network, scivis, security

One of the best resources for innovations in the field of visualization for network security is the Annual VizSec Workshop. This year the VizSec Workshop will be held in Atlantic City, NJ along with the Visualization conference and the InfoVis conference. Click here for more details about the workshop – VisSec 2009.

Before I discuss some innovative visualizations for network security, let me point out that there are two excellent books written by visualization for network security experts. Here they are:

Security Data Visualization: Graphical Techniques for Network Analysis by Greg Conti

Security Data Visualization is a well-researched and richly illustrated introduction to the field. Greg Conti, creator of the network and security visualization tool RUMINT, shows you how to graph and display network data using a variety of tools so that you can understand complex datasets at a glance. And once you’ve seen what a network attack looks like, you’ll have a better understanding of its low-level behavior–like how vulnerabilities are exploited and how worms and viruses propagate.

Applied Security Visualization by Raffy Marty (who has a security visualization blog at http://secviz.org).

In Applied Security Visualization, leading network security visualization expert Raffael Marty introduces all the concepts, techniques, and tools you need to use visualization on your network. You’ll learn how to identify and utilize the right data sources, then transform your data into visuals that reveal what you really need to know. Next, Marty shows how to use visualization to perform broad network security analyses, assess specific threats, and even improve business compliance.

Read after the break for some other excellent sources of innovations in the network security visualization field:

Read more…

Science feature, network, security, vizsec

A set of custom software developed by Zum Kuckuck analyzed international data flow as well as network traffic of the Deutsche Telekom in real time, presenting it on a large plasma screen in the the Product Experience Center.  The visualization is 3D and real-time, showing the usage of their entire network infrastructure.

The software is based on Processing.  See more pictures and videos of the results at the website.

Realtime Information Graphics.

Graphics, Science art, network, processing, telecom

ILM‘s network infrastructure operates on Gigabit Ethernet switches from Brocade, and Peter Hricak sits down for a short promotional piece talking about their network infrastructure.  As CG visual effects became a prominent piece of the company,the network became an increasingly critical part of the puzzle.  The video has a few details of their setup, and many shots of their massive rendering clusters and server rooms.

See the video after the break.

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Graphics, Hardware brocade, ilm, network, servers