Network visualization

The Interactive Network Active-traffic Visualization (INAV), is a monitoring tool that allows network administrators to monitor traffic on a local area network in real-time without overwhelming the administrator with extraneous data. The visualization tool can effectively perform a variety of tasks from passively mapping a LAN to identifying reoccurring trends over time.

Currently, INAV supports Ethernet, IP, TCP, UDP, and ICMP. INAV is implemented using a client-server architecture that allows multiple administrators to easily view network traffic from different vantage points across the network.

Once established, the INAV server passively sniffs data from the network and dynamically displays activity between different nodes on the network while keeping statistics on bandwidth usage.

The current state of the network is stored and broadcast to the different INAV clients. The INAV client uses an intuitive, lightweight graphical user interface that can easily change views and orient on specific clusters of nodes.

Once a node on the network is selected, the client highlights any node that has sent traffic to or from that location. The client receives the current state of the network with a variable refresh rate that is adjustable to limit INAV generated
Communications on the network. Installation of the tool is straight forward and its operation is very intuitive. The INAV server runs on any Linux operating system with root privileges, while the client was developed in Java and can be run on most operating systems.

You can download INAV at inav.scaparra.com and a detailed white paper is available at inav.scaparra.com/docs/whitePapers/INAV.pdf.