Network Traffic Visualization

[Daniel C.]

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?

- What do you need to see in order to solve the problem(s)?  Are we
talking all traffic to everything, or only packets that meet certain
criteria to a single machine?

- What workflows are currently in place to tackle the problems that
could be improved by having access to a visualization tool?

Thank you all in advance!  Anything I put together will be released
free and open source.  Hopefully it will also be useful.

-Dan