Visualising IP Network Performance with TCL/Tk

CS-TR-96-9

Authors: Tim Robertson, Robert Biddle
Source: GZipped PostScript (105kb); Adobe PDF (324kb)


Modern computer systems include both local and wide area networking as part of their functional structure. Accordingly, effective performance management requires understanding of the network performance. Networking technologies are not specific to vendors of either hardware or software, and so practical tools to assist network management must work with a range of hardware and software.

This paper describes a tool for visualising network traffic on IP networks by means of customisable dynamic displays of network activity. The display software is largely written in TCL/Tk, an interpreted language with an excellent flexible graphics toolkit. The work described in this paper is part of a larger project, CR, involving development of a performance management system that uses a ``building block'' approach to allow easily configurable monitoring of distributed heterogeneous systems.


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