A Michael F. Schwartz 
A David H. Goldstein 
A Richard K. Neves 
A David C. M. Wood 
T An Architecture for Discovering and Visualizing Characteristics
of Large Internets 

I Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado,
Boulder, Colorado 

R Technical Report CU-CS-520-91 

D February 1991 

X Available from
ftp:ftp.cs.colorado.edupubcstechreportsschwartzNetVis.ps.Z or
ftp:ftp.cs.colorado.edupubcstechreportsschwartzNetVis.txt.Z 

X A more recent paper describes the prototype that resulted from
this initial architecture.  That paper is "Fremont: A System for
Discovering Network Characteristics and Problems". 

X Abstract: "In this paper we present an architecture for
discovering characteristics of large internets, such as topology,
congestion, routing, and protocol usage.  Our approach uses a
very loosely coupled architecture that does not require global
agreement over a particular network management standard, such as
the Simple Network Management Protocol.  Instead, we use a number
of different network protocols and information sources to derive
information about networks, cross-correlating this information
when necessary to determine important characteristics or to
uncover inconsistent information.  This approach recognizes that
different sources of network information have different
characteristics with respect to timeliness of discovered
information, expense, danger of generating network problems, and
completeness of discovered information.  Our architecture gives
the network administrator control over which discovery protocols
are used, and how frequently each is scheduled.  Moreover, the
architecture focuses  supporting network management in large
scale internets, such as the global TCPIP Internet.  We have
built a prototype implementation that can collect network
information using a few network protocols, and display this
information graphically."