Research On Visualization Of Network Topology Under The Constraints Of Geographic Location Information

With the continuous growth of the network scale, visualization of network topology which translates abstract text data of network topology into vivid and intuitive diagrams or images is a powerful technique and tool assisting network administrators to comprehend, analyze network structure and troubleshoot. Traditional visualization technology concentrates on presenting logical structure of network topology and achieves general aesthetic standard visual result, but it neglects the inherent geographic location information of network.With the rise of various global positioning system and navigating systems, the geographic position information of networks becomes more and more important. Basically, network topology is the abstraction of real network, and geographic location information is an inherent attribute of networks consisting of network equipments and links between them, so the ignorance of geographic location information will bring about miscomprehension to some extent undoubtedly. To breakthrough traditional network topology visualization limitation and to feature geographic location information of network topology, two aspects of this thesis under geographic location information restraints are as below:1. This thesis puts forward an improved force-directed layout algorithm applying to geographic location information constraint condition. This algorithm, which adopts divide and conquer strategy, divides the global Internet topology according to its inherent hierarchical structure and community structure, and layouts each part respectively, which will reduce the holistic layout difficulty of the global Internet topology, improve topology layout efficiency and achieve layout of highly hierarchy and readability. This algorithm takes both partial node’s geographic location information and aesthetic standard into consideration, and solves the contradiction between tradition layout algorithms and geographic location information.2. This thesis designs and realizes a three-dimensional network topology visualization system under geographic location information restraints. Accompanied by hierarchical and community detection algorithms, topology layout algorithms under geographic location information restraints act as the core of this system, which can fulfill the mission of the global Internet topology layout. Additionally, this system taking Google Earth as geographic location information carrier and main display window, not only displays the global Internet topology three-dimensionally, hierarchically and vividly, but also highlights geographic location information and performs well in interaction. Through testing, the result demonstrates that the network topology visualization system in this thesis can display the global Internet topology structure hierarchically, vividly and intuitively under geographic location information restraints.