Archived: 7 November 2000
Adelaide University Honours thesis, October 2000.
Supervisors: P.D. Coddington and K.A. Hawick
Computer networks and especially the Internet are by their very nature tremendously complicated. This is because networks include many hosts and connections between them. Computer visualisation techniques offer the opportunity to display complicated sets of information in an easy to view and easy to understand manner. This thesis examines methods for mapping computer networks and visualising the results.
This project involved implementation of a generic three-dimensional graphing package. The package contains many different techniques for laying out the graphs in an easy to visualise pattern. Good layout methods are needed to facilitate people’s understanding of the visualisation application. The resulting graphs were rendered in three-dimensions using Java3D. The user is able to view and interact with the graphs in real time.
One application of visualisation methods is the mapping of computer networks and the collection of statistics about them. This project used the Simple Network Management Protocol to query the required information from the network and used it to build the graphs.