The following press release is public information and may be freely reproduced without express permission from Gadgets Software.

Latest press release

Martin van den Nieuwelaar,
martin at gadgets.co.nz

Gadgets Software releases Network Traffic Visualisation Application

8 November 2001

Gadgets Software & Professional Services Ltd. (www.gadgets.co.nz) today released a software package called Network Intelligence. This application promises to give new insight into traffic flows on carrier sized networks. Using Network Intelligence, designers and operators of network management centres are now able to quickly and easily see where customer traffic is flowing, even once it has left the carrier network. This is achieved using a three dimensional visualisation engine based on the OpenGL(tm) standard. As designers become increasingly aware of their customer's traffic patterns they can optimise the topology of the network, thereby improving performance while reducing operating cost.

Ask anyone involved with the running of an IP carrier network for details regarding traffic flows of individual customers and you will probably not receive a useful response. That's because in many networks operating today it's very difficult, or even impossible to tell. The bandwidth a customer consumes on each circuit in the network, or even the destination of their traffic and whether it goes via a peer or transit provider are difficult to answer at the best of times. In most cases these details are unavailable, and yet this sort of information is vital for properly designing a network. Ironically, the statistics have been available for some time but until now the tools to collect and analyse them have lagged behind. Currently available software tends to work at a very low level, operating from a command line interface and generating tables in plain text files. These can be difficult to decipher, the actual meaning or significance of a report being somewhat open to interpretation. This kind of information however is extremely useful for both network designers and groups evaluating potential peering partners.

Network Intelligence marks the next generation of collection and visualisation tools. Data collection is performed in near real-time, with centralised collection control for the vast amount of traffic flowing across today's high speed carrier networks. A high speed database stores network topology and traffic flow information. Client software running on the operators PC connects to the central server, which in turn responds with a stream of network updates. The user is immersed in a three dimensional environment of routers, circuits and traffic flows. OpenGL is used to maintain high frame rates when inside the VR world. Collaboration between multiple clients inside the environment allows for "follow the sun" style network management popular in global networks.

Network Intelligence has been developed over the last year with GNU/Linux as the primary development platform. Cross platform design tools have meant that a windows version is also available, with other platforms to follow soon.

Gadgets Software in addition to being involved with the development of traffic measurement software also offers performance tuning services and support for companies worldwide.