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.

I spend part of my time providing network management and consulting services to a consortium of local schools - The Albany Schools Network (ASN). We have spent a significant amount of time over the last three years migrating form an ancient legacy system consisting of a decrepit SparcStation 5, and some ancient old Cisco Routers (AGS+ and CGS+ - both of which were eol’d in 1997) linked to nominally 33.6Kbit dedicated analog lines.

Thankfully we have come a long way and now boast a healthy modern network with peering at GINX. Early last year saw the introduction of the first of our 1Mbit DSL lines form Internet Solutions, the first real boost of bandwidth available to the schools, and something worthwhile doing since the actual links to the schools had been upgraded.

Looking over some stats I pulled up the following two reports from LightSquid while not the most scientific they convey the massive growth in utilization for the schools. While these represent the larges of the schools in terms of usage, the grown is pretty similar for all members of the consortium.

The first image is from may last year:

The second was generated this morning showing a somewhat heavier utilization. It is worth noting that during this period, the schools link was upgraded from 384Kbit to over a Megabit.

I find it extremely gratifying to see these schools making such full use of the resources at hand!