Latency Topography
| Aaron Siegel + + Latency Topography 
Conceptual Aspects: The idea behind my project was based on the concept of internet distance relating to the time it takes for data to reach between points. It is an experiment in network topology defined by the latency between ones-self and another node on the network, rather than by numeric IP address or physical connections between electronic devices. From the resulting visual translation, one can begin to gain cognition of network traffic and software communication. 
Technical Aspects: As the client encounters an IP address that it has not seen before, it uses the system integrated PING command to send an ICMP packet to the address to measure the latency of data traveling between the client and that node. It takes that unique address and uses it as a key to add to a dictionary and assigns it a list value of xyz coordinates calculated to the exact distance from the client node in the center congruent to the data latency in milliseconds. When it draws to the screen, it reviews the dictionary and builds a node in space for each entry based on the coordinates it was assigned. 
As the client encounters packets, it reads the packet headers and parses out the transmitting and receiving IP addresses as well as their ports, and appends these to a list of recently seen packets. When the screen draws, it reviews the list and connects the IP addresses with a stippled line (white on the senders end; blue on the receivers end), and then fades the line out over a second. The software uses various grids that you can turn on and off to more easily determine spatial relationships of nodes. On windows, I've incorporated an audio module to audiolize the port data of traveling packets. The port number is used to set the frequency of the system beep which occurs when the packet header is encountered. 
Aaron Siegel [video][site][curatorial] |
