Using visualization techniques for SNMP traffic analyses

The network management area is currently dealing with huge amounts of information, which are produced, for example, by large scale and high-speed networks, heterogeneous devices, and monitoring and notification systems. Researchers and network administrators are frequently supported by information visualization techniques in the task of analyzing these large data sets. The simple network management protocol (SNMP) is the de facto standard for TCP/IP networks management. Despite its importance, there are no specific visualizations defined for SNMP traffic traces. In this paper we present a study on techniques for visualizing SNMP trace files, motivated by the fact that general purpose network traffic visualizations available today are not suitable for SNMP observation. Our proposed techniques have been prototyped in a software tool called management traffic analyzer, which has been used to analyze and visualize SNMP traces.