Dynamic visualization of large scale tactical network simulations

Abstract

Network simulations are widely used for evaluating network functionality and protocols. Large scale network simulations in particular, produce huge amounts of data, making automatic data visualization tools extremely useful. Visual network analysis tools are capable of bringing the salient network performance metrics to the forefront revealing hidden relationships between different entities. This paper describes a custom visualization framework for rapid visual analysis of performance metrics in tactical network simulations. By utilizing network data gathered via the ns-3 simulator, a series of analytical tests using this framework have been conducted. Results from these tests indicate the usefulness of such a visualization framework when studying large scale network topologies.