SURFmap: A network monitoring tool based on the Google Maps API

Abstract

Network monitoring allows network managers to get a better insight in the network traffic transiting in a managed network. In order to make the tasks of a network manager easier, many network monitoring tools are made available for a wide range of purposes (e.g., traffic accounting, performance analysis, and so on) network managers may have. However, most of these tools lack to provide geographical information about network traffic. This paper presents a network monitoring tool prototype, called SURFmap, which provides network traffic information at a geographical dimension by using the Google Maps API. Through the use of the Google Maps API's features, SURFmap provides different zoom levels when showing network information, which results in the creation of different levels of abstraction in the network data visualization. SURFmap has revealed to be more intuitive when showing network traffic information, which makes the network monitoring activity from the network manager's perspective more interesting.