Static in the Ether

With Nick now in Grahamstown, development on the Hilbert Curve application has progressed well. Version 4.05 has been released around a month after the 2.05 edition previously mentioned, which is heading much closer towards completion. The unix build scripts still need to be integrated, but there has been much improvement. The most noticeable improvements are in the processing speed new around 90 seconds for a datafile of 53 million Addresses, and its ability to put out some very high res images (4096×4096) when working with higher order curves. At this resolution we are able to present a single pixel as representing a class C network or in effect 256 individual IP addresses. The updated release also allows for the application of image overlays when in interactive mode, which can make navigation significantly easier.

A sample of the kind of output is seen below (full resolution image is 990K) which shows destination IP addresses harvested from the Albany Schools Cache server during January through May 2008:


A plot of 53 million packets from the CAIDA telescope project – 27 Feb 2007 midnight to 6am:





With these higher resolution images available, analysis can be performed at a much finer grained level.