Skip to main content

Angular Histogram-Based Visualisation of Network Traffic Flow Measurement Data

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA 2019)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 926))

  • 1795 Accesses

Abstract

Knowledge of the traffic that is being carried within a network is critical for ensuring the network’s smooth operation, and network traffic measurement has provided an effective means to achieve this. However, network traffic volume has substantially increased over the last decades. Combine that with the traffic heterogeneity from a diverse range of new, connected devices, we have reached a point where the response to any outage or anomalous event is simply beyond human ability. Network information visualisation is a useful tool to help network administrators deal with this problem. While this approach is not new, traditional approaches do not scale well with the increasing volume and heterogeneity of network traffic. In this paper, we propose the application of angular histogram visualisation to provide an information-rich overview of large network traffic data sets to improve the interpretation and understanding of network traffic flow measurement data. We evaluate our approach experimentally using live network traffic to demonstrate its efficacy and provide suggestions on how it can be further improved.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Packet CAPture.

  2. 2.

    Comma-Separated Values.

References

  1. Auld, T., Moore, A.W., Gull, S.F.: Bayesian neural networks for internet traffic classification. IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. 18(1), 223–239 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1109/TNN.2006.883010

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Card, S.K., Mackinlay, J.D., Shneiderman, B. (eds.): Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Cisco and/or its affiliates: Cisco visual networking index: forecast and methodology, 2016–2021. Technical report C11-481360-01. Cisco Systems, Inc. (2017). https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/index.html

  4. Engel, D., Hagen, H., Hamann, B., Rosenbaum, R.: Structural decomposition trees: semantic and practical implications. In: Csurka, G., Kraus, M., Laramee, R.S., Richard, P., Braz, J. (eds.) Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics. Theory and Application, pp. 193–208. Springer, Berlin (2013)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. flowRecorder: A network traffic flow feature measurement tool (2018). https://github.com/drnpkr/flowRecorder

  6. Geng, Z., Peng, Z., Laramee, R.S., Roberts, J.C., Walker, R.: Angular histograms: frequency-based visualizations for large, high dimensional data. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 17(12), 2572–2580 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2011.166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Guimaraes, V.T., Freitas, C.M.D.S., Sadre, R., Tarouco, L.M.R., Granville, L.Z.: A survey on information visualization for network and service management. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor. 18(1), 285–323 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2015.2450538

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Kim, H., Claffy, K., Fomenkov, M., Barman, D., Faloutsos, M., Lee, K.: Internet traffic classification demystified: myths, caveats, and the best practices. In: Proceedings of the 4th ACM Conference on Emerging Network Experiment and Technology (CoNEXT), Madrid, Spain, pp. 11:1–11:12 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1145/1544012.1544023

  9. Kim, S.S., Reddy, A.L.N.: A study of analyzing network traffic as images in real-time. In: Proceedings of the 24th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, vol. 3, pp. 2056–2067 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1109/INFCOM.2005.1498482

  10. Kim, S.S., Reddy, A.L.N.: Image-based anomaly detection technique: algorithm, implementation and effectiveness. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 24(10), 1942–1954 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1109/JSAC.2006.877215

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Liu, S., Cui, W., Wu, Y., Liu, M.: A survey on information visualization: recent advances and challenges. Vis. Comput. 30(12), 1373–1393 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-013-0892-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Moore, A.W., Zuev, D., Crogan, M.L.: Discriminators for use in flow-based classification. Technical report RR-05-13, Queen Mary University of London (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Nguyen, T.T.T., Armitage, G.: A survey of techniques for internet traffic classification using machine learning. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor. 10(4), 56–76 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1109/SURV.2008.080406

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Pekár, A., Chovanec, M., Vokorokos, L., Chovancová, E., Feciľak, P., Michalko, M.: Adaptive aggregation of flow records. Comput. Inform. 37(1), 142–164 (2018). https://doi.org/10.4149/cai_2018_1_142

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Shiravi, H., Shiravi, A., Ghorbani, A.A.: A survey of visualization systems for network security. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graphi. 18(8), 1313–1329 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2011.144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Valenti, S., Rossi, D., Dainotti, A., Pescapé, A., Finamore, A., Mellia, M.: Reviewing traffic classification, pp. 123–147. Springer, Berlin (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36784-7_6

  17. Vokorokos, L., Pekar, A., Adam, N.: Data preprocessing for efficient evaluation of network traffic parameters. In: Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Engineering Systems, INES, pp. 363–367 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1109/INES.2012.6249860

Download references

Acknowledgement

A. Pekar and W. Seah are supported by VUW’s Huawei NZ Research Programme, Software-Defined Green Internet of Things (project #E2881).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrian Pekar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Pekar, A., Ruan, M.B.H., Seah, W.K.G. (2020). Angular Histogram-Based Visualisation of Network Traffic Flow Measurement Data. In: Barolli, L., Takizawa, M., Xhafa, F., Enokido, T. (eds) Advanced Information Networking and Applications. AINA 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 926. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15032-7_30

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics