GLORIAD Utilization Monitoring System (GMON)

The new GMON system ( http://www.gloriad.org/gloriad/monitor/), launched January 8, 2001, represents a complete re-write of the original system, adding many additional analyses, a new "graphic" method of exploring network usage, faster creation of charts and tables, and incorporating a much improved code base.

The following explains the improvements - primarily from a user's point of view - but with some additional technical information.

GRAPHIC INTERFACE

The system now generates CGI imagemaps for almost all charts and graphs produced - allowing the user to click on a "bar" of interest and resulting in a more detailed/refined analysis of the network usage data represented by that graph object. Thus, a user looking at a graph of monthly traffic from Russia to Asia can click on one of the "month" bars and will be taken to a more detailed analysis - showing a day-by-day usage summary, a further breakdown by network protocol, and a summary table showing the top institutional "partnerships" represented during that month. The new graphs are themselves "live" allowing the user to dig further into the data. Ultimately, the user can see a detailed summary of traffic between specific host machines for specific protocols of traffic.

Each new analysis provides a detailed listing of the query parameters used in generating the new chart or table.

NETWORK DOMAIN ANALYSIS

• To help the user explore network usage by network domain (i.e., kiae.ru, nasa.gov, etc.), the system can now track domains at three-levels (instead of the former two-level capability). In the case of NASA, for example, the system now differentiates usage at the Goddard Space Flight Center from that at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

• On the domains report (and for all other analyses), the system provides an additional optional search parameter of network protocol. Thus, for example, one can now look at FTP usage vs. Web usage vs. UDP-Other usage, etc. The parameter is provided on all search screens.

• The domains report screen (and almost all other analysis screens) now provides source country and destination country as optional query parameters. Thus, one can look at heaviest institutional network users between, for example, Russia and the US or Russia and Japan, etc.

COUNTRY ANALYSIS

1. A month-to-month total chart

2. A pie chart showing breakdown of traffic by protocol;

3. A pie chart showing breakdown by top institutional domains in Russia receiving traffic from US domains;

4. A month-to-month bar chart of top institutional domains in Russia receiving traffic from US domains;

5. A similar bar chart to (4) but showing how percentage of traffic to domains in Russia has changed on a monthly basis;

6. A month-to-month bar chart of top US domains *providing* data to Russia;

7. A similar chart to (6) but showing percentage changes per month

8. A month-to-month bar chart showing total traffic per protocol

9. A similar chart to (8) but showing percentage changes per month.

   All of the bar charts are "live" - allowing the user to go deeper into the analysis for a day-to-day look at traffic, more detailed information on network domains (and who they are sending or receiving data to/from), etc.

REGIONAL ANALYSIS

http://solar.ncsa.uiuc.edu/madas/reports/

choose the "US/Russian Regional Reports", leave all query parameters as they are and click "Run Report". The user will be shown the following:

1. A pie chart showing breakdown of traffic to the US from Russia by US geographic region (US Southwest vs. US Northeast, etc.)

2. A month-to-month breakdown of traffic to US by US region;

3. A "percentage" chart showing breakdown of traffic to US by US region;

4. A pie short showing the Russian source of traffic to the US by Russian region;

5. Two month-by-month charts showing Russian regional source of traffic (and how it changes on percentage basis each month);

6. Finally, a month-to-month breakdown of traffic by protocol.

ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS

http://solar.ncsa.uiuc.edu/madas/reports/

choose the "US/Russian Regional Reports" and then leave all query parameters as they are and click "Run Report". The user will be shown the following:

1. a month-to-month breakdown of traffic to specific US DOE sites (and percentage chart of the same);

2. a month-to-month breakdown of traffic to US DOE sites from Russian institutional domains (and then a percentage chart of the same);

3. A breakdown of specific network protocols;

WORLD REGION ANALYSIS

http://solar.ncsa.uiuc.edu/madas/reports/

choose the "World Regional Reports". Leave parameters as they are and click "Run Report".

The user will be shown the following:

1. pie chart showing breakdown by world region receiving information from Russia;

2. A month-by-month breakdown of world region receiving information from Russia (and then a percentage breakdown of the same);

3. pie chart showing breakdown by world region providing information to Russia;

4. A month-by-month breakdown of world region providing information to Russia (and then a percentage breakdown of the same);

5. A month-by-month breakdown of traffic by protocol.

WORLD CITIES ANALYSIS

http://solar.ncsa.uiuc.edu/madas/reports/

choose the "World Cities Reports". Leave parameters as they are and click "Run Report". Warning: this analysis area is much slower than other areas. It may take more than a minute for results to appear.

The user will be shown the following:

1. pie chart showing breakdown by world city receiving information via GLORIAD;

2. A month-by-month breakdown of world city receiving information via GLORIAD (and then a percentage breakdown of the same);

3. A month-by-month breakdown of world city providing information via GLORIAD (and then a percentage breakdown of the same);

4. A month-by-month breakdown of traffic by protocol.

10 MINUTE UPDATES

• an hour-by-hour summary for the current day is provided at:

  http://www.gloriad.org/
  gloriad/monitor/graph.24hours.html

• a thirty (30) day summary (with totals for each day) is provided at:

  http://www.gloriad.org/
  gloriad/monitor/graph.30days.html

• a ninety (90) day summary (with totals for each day) is provided at:

  http://www.gloriad.org/
  gloriad/monitor/graph.90days.html

TOP USERS

Prefetched versions of these reports are available here.

OTHER FEATURES

The database underlying NADAS now represents over 85 million network flows. To make the system responsive to user queries, a series of summary tables are maintained - and updated live every 10 minutes. A pre-query optimizer selects the best/fastest table for each query. This system/method for responding to user requests is a critical feature of NADAS - without it, many of the queries described above would each take from 15 - 30 minutes.

The heart of the system is the Domains database - which provides certain descriptive attributes of over 43,000 network domains which have had some traffic transiting GLORIAD since September 1, 1999. Adding "intelligence" (new attributes) to this database makes possible entirely new classes of analyses.

TECHNOLOGY

NADAS represents over two years of fairly intensive work on behalf of authors Greg Cole (gcole@friends-partners.org and Natasha Bulashova (natasha@friends-partners.org)) of the Friends and Partners project (F&P). F&P has worked for over ten years (since January 1994) on use of network technologies to encourage interaction and exchange between citizens of US and Russia ( http://www.friends-partners.org/friends/ ).

The authors are interested in continuing the development of GMON to serve broader needs of the global high performance networking community.