My latest dream visualization is a visualizer that shows real-ish location, movement, and flows of devices on map of physical space. Could work for Disneyland; University campus; big businesses, or maybe large Malls.
All the pieces are there. We have available:
- We can easily build and maintain a database of most important external networks/CIDRs. Such as voice traffic to Sprint; Youtube to Google; etc. This gets easier and easier as IPv6 gains traction.
- We already have device identification data-streams from our wireless controllers. We have gotten this from Aruba and Meru. Cisco is bound to also provide it.
- We have wireless device signal strength monitoring from our distributed APs. If we need more signal strength monitoring, it is easy and cheap to create monitors with Raspberry Pi or Arduino.
- We can easily build a database to tie IP identifiers to Cell identifiers. Database should be fairly static, for IPv6.
So, we bind everything back to ethernet address. Then our visualization can have several modes:
- Display location and movement of devices overlaid on structural map.
- On demand, we can add an Organic Visualizer like flow display for top talkers or subsets of devices. This display would place external traffic destinations around edge of visualization. Those destinations would probably start as summaries: Like Google, Apple, Sprint etc. Then, on request, you filter or expand interesting traffic.
I used to have a programmer that would take an outline like this and produce a working prototype in a week. He was amazing. But, now he makes a fortune creating code and visualizations for Boeing.
Edited to add…
And then the fever passes, and I realize that this visualizer will not in any way advance University interests. It will not convince people to do a better job of managing their equipment. It will not find broken or vulnerable configurations. It will not reassure that other University goals are being accomplished. And, there is no way our oversight groups would OK the expense.
After spending a decade or two doing computer and network security, I am growing to have a horrified sympathy for the NSA. I still feel that their surveillance in insane, but I can understand the process that lead to it. If congress gave me an impossible mandate, an infinite budget, and no oversight, I would probably make the same mistakes.
