1. Visualizing RIPE
data: Caidagram,
VisualK, BGPlay
Claudio Squarcella
Roma Tre University / RIPE NCC

2. Introduction
• CV – in less than 140 characters
– PhD student at Roma Tre University
– (twice) at the RIPE NCC for some months
– Visiting scholar at CAIDA in 2010
• What I do – in less than 140 characters
– Research on Graph Drawing and Information
Visualization
– Tools
and prototypes with special focus on Computer
Networks
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
2

3. Caidagram – geolocation of Internet data
• Many Internet measurements are based on a
high number of distributed nodes
– e.g. RIPE Atlas
• Geographical distribution often implies
geolocation of measurements
– e.g. RIPE Atlas users provide lat/lon
• Therefore geography is a good candidate
metaphor to understand collected data
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
3

4. Caidagram – area cartograms
http://v6asns.ripe.net/
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
4

5. Caidagram – distance cartograms
http://www.caida.org/projects/ark/
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
5

6. Caidagram – concentric distance map
http://dnsmon.ripe.net/
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
6

7. VisualK – K-root as an anycast service
• based on 18 anycast instances in the world
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
7

8. VisualK – monitoring K-root in real-time
• What?
– Queries per second (qps) served by each instance
– Traffic migration between instances
– Unexpected changes (e.g. sudden increase of qps)
• Why?
– Detection of failures and attacks
– Performance tuning
– Indirect analysis of the state of interdomain routing
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
8

9. VisualK – migration graph
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
9

10. VisualK – usual vs unusal patterns
• TODO add screenshot
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
10

11. VisualK – alternative visualization
• Instances as adjacent countries (cartogram-like)
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
11

12. BGPlay – visualizing interdomain routing
• BGPlay displays animated, interactive graphs of
the routing activity related to an Internet prefix
– The user specifies a prefix and a time interval of interest
– The tool shows the related “BGP history”
• Different instances for different data sets
– RIPE RIS data (http://www.ripe.net/ris)
– RouteViews (University of Oregon)
– RIPE INRDB (historical data)
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
12

13. BGPlay – routing graph and timeline
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
13

14. BGPlay – what happened in Egypt?
• Interdomain routing change after the massive
disconnection imposed by authorities
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
14

15. Historical BGPlay – more data, less detail
http://sga.ripe.net/hbgplay/
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
15

16. Technologies
• JavaScript web applications
– Vector images (SVG): Raphaël.js
– HTML5 canvas: Paper.js
– Google Web Toolkit
• Java applets
– Vintage stuff J
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
16

17. What’s next?
• BGPlay++
– Integration with RIPEstat
– New features (e.g. visualize IPv4 vs IPv6)
• Atlas visualizations
– Geographical maps
– Flow, traceroute, etc
• …
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
17

18. Contact info
• Website: http://squarcella.com/
• Twitter: @hyperboreans
• Email: claudio.me (replace ‘a’ with ‘@’)
Claudio Squarcella, January 2012
18

19. Questions?