Slashdot Mirror
Network-Monitoring Data Put to Music
StrongGlad writes "Building on the idea that people are naturally attuned to sound, the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has created software that translates network and server activity into music. And, their IT department operators can interpret the music to detect problems in the system." Talk about finding the beauty in Spam. From the article: "Last Friday, IT department operators began listening to what sounds like classical music but is actually a precise audio model of system metrics. They are trained to recognize instruments, chords, tempo and other musical elements of music as a translation of e-mail activity from 15 servers over three subnets. Every aspect of the music correlates to information. Probes detect server activity and send about 20 summaries a second to the iSIC sound engine. The data is aggregated and transformed into an audio format."
He's a loser Marge, dump him! :sings: I travelled the world and the seven seas, I am watching you through a camera!
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
I swear I remember reading about something like this years ago but for the life of me, I haven't been able to find it mentioned anywhere.
Although it wasn't email / spam related, the system I'm thinking of used jungle sounds (birds, rivers etc.) but had things like lion roars when the firewall detected a hack attempt.
Am I just dreaming this, or can someone give me any more information?
It sounds kind of hokey, but it probably works very well, certainly better than looking at a bunch of hex. This probably depends on what you're using to monitor your traffic. After all, the best morse code transcribers do 250 wpm.
I hate sigs.
Just what does a slashdotting sound like?
It wasn't bad enough that my cube-mate eats cereal by the handful from the box with his mouth open, or that there are 6 cell phones and 5 desk phones in a five foot radius of where I try to concentrate on difficult computational problems.
Now there is an entire orchestra of uncomposed dissonance playing at all times that I'm responsible for listening to.
Grand.
Just Grand.
I'm imagining cannons firing and drums crashing as their site gets slashdotted.
... but, frankly, can't anybody think of something better?
(I can imagine the dialog right now: wait, is the oboe a sign something is wrong, or is it the violin? Err...)
After a couple of weeks installing and configuring net-snmp, cacti and nagios, I seriously think music is NOT the way to go. Real-time graphics are a lot more informative and easier to understand. Music is fun, sure, but way too complex to understand.
Besides, I don't really like music entirely made by computers. And I am a Kraftwerk fan. Go figure.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
to specific patterns of network activity, then I would love to hear the Barry White-like sounds that the system would produce by monitoring all the pr0n coming through my Exchange server at work.......
More importantly, if your site gets slashdotted in the woods and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a noise?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceed ings/lisa2000/gilfix/gilfix_html/
Peep (The Network Auralizer): Monitoring Your Network With Sound
Michael Gilfix & Prof. Alva Couch - Tufts University
Abstract
"Activities in complex networks are often both too important to ignore and too tedious to watch. We created a network monitoring system, Peep, that replaces visual monitoring with a sonic `ecology' of natural sounds, where each kind of sound represents a specific kind of network event. This system combines network state information from multiple data sources, by mixing audio signals into a single audio stream in real time. Using Peep, one can easily detect common network problems such as high load, excessive traffic, and email spam, by comparing sounds being played with those of a normally functioning network. This allows the system administrator to concentrate on more important things while monitoring the network via peripheral hearing."
"This work was supported in part by a USENIX student software project grant. "....
The server farm is playing Taps again. It's going to be a LONG weekend.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I figured you'd all want to hear what it sounds like:
Listen page
How come no one else here is reminded by the system made by the Gordon Way in the book by Douglas Adams, "Dirk Gently's holistic Detective Agency"? There was an application he helped create called Anthem which turned financial results and various other pieces of company data into jingles and music.
I have seen something about a similar project that used graphical patterns and colors/intensity/patterns indicated potential problems. I think this would probably be alot nicer since it doesn't leave you staring at a monitor all day (yes I know most of us do this anyways). With networks getting larger and more complex things happening on them, projects like this are definetly an interesting avenue for monitoring. I know people that can read tcpdump screens at a truely disturbing rate, but being able to sit and "watch" all the logs of everything in their multitude of formats and indicators is going to be a huge leap forward in detection and prevention. Most intrusions aren't caught until well after the fact, if at all. Having something like this that could potentially alert admin and security folks of trouble on the network, malicious or not, would be awesome.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Safety systems in some installations handling radioactive materials broadcast a background sequence of notes/clicks (*not* anything like a geiger counter) through loudspeakers in critical areas - the 'melody' is designed to be unobtrusive under normal conditions (your mind 'tunes it out'), but the notes change under alarm conditions or when certain monitored values start moving and even minute variations in the sound are immediately obvious to those in earshot. This has been in use for tens of years. ..and some of us just have to stare at a Nagios Web page or wait for an email that triggers a 'beep' sound.
AT&ROFLMAO
Well to listen to slashdot, you could send it into a audio device. As root wget -nv http://www.slashdot.org/ && cat index.html > /dev/audio
Or you could ghetto rig the machine to output the network dump such as from tcpdump directly to a audio device, not as nice music as the original post, but it will work.
recognizing what's wrong with this whole world simply by listening to most popular chart hits :)
Well, since it's generally agreed that the music studios stopped listening to their customers decades ago, all that would tell you what is wrong with a bunch of their executives. And we already know what is wrong with them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That was my first though as well... to quote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:
"But the silliest feature of all was that if you wanted your company accounts represented as a piece of music, it could do that as well. Well, I thought it was silly. The corporate world went bananas over it."
Reg regarded him solemnly from over a piece of carrot poised delicately on his fork in front of him, but did not interrupt.
"You see, any aspect of a piece of music can be expressed as a sequence or pattern of numbers," enthused Richard. "Numbers can express the pitch of notes, the length of notes, patterns of pitches and lengths. . "
"You mean tunes," said Reg. The carrot had not moved yet.
Richard grinned.
"Tunes would be a very good word for it. I must remember that."
"It would help you speak more easily." Reg returned the carrot to his plate, untasted. "And this software did well, then?" he asked.
"Not so much here. The yearly accounts of most British companies emerged sounding like the Dead March from Saul, but in Japan they went for it like a pack of rats. It produced lots of cheery company anthems that started well, but if you were going to criticise you'd probably say that they tended to get a bit loud and squeaky at the end. Did spectacular business in the States, which was the main thing, commercially."
RIP DNA. The world makes less sense without you.
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.
I think you misunderstood the purpose of this project.
They don't want to replace all those graphic displays with music, but they intend to use sound in addition to graphics.
If you rely purely on a graphics display you would have to hire someone who has to babysit the monitor, in case something odd starts to happen. He can't really work if he has to stop every 5 minutes and check the monitor (and there are probably "false feeling of safty" effects to be countered too, after all, checking the monitor for X weeks and nothing big popping up might make the person(s) realax too much)
With the music you don't have to check at the monitor all the time, you notice when the music changes (and can go check) but as long as it remains the same you can get some real work done.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
My network sounded like a couple of trains crashing into each other, in the middle of a field of empty rusting bathtubs, with a cold, harsh, north wind blowing at hurricane force. And that was on a good day :-)
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Demarco and Lister's Peopleware book has a good section on the importance of a quiet workspace. In a study they quote (this one from Cornell in the 1960s), researchers split a group of computer science students into two groups, the first group listened to music through headphones and the second group was in a silent room. Each group was given the same programming problem, which consisted of a series of mathematical operations, to implement from a specification. The speed and accuracy of the programming was about the same in each group, but, the assignment itself was a trick question - the end result was that the output number was the same as in the input. And, of those that realized this, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room.
Most "technical" work uses the left side of the brain, I suppose leaving the right side of the brain free to listen to music to monitor the system. But, every so often, even in what is considered "technical" work, a person needs to be creative, and it would be unfortunate if at that point in time your right side of the brain is off monitoring the system.
Of course, if multitasking is so important, audio content is really the only content which has the potential for effective multitasking.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
Will a port scan sound like playing the scale?
By a buncha Germans calling themselves Kraftwerk. And I still can't get that damned "Autobahn" outta my head. Damn you, Ralf and Forian! Damn you to Hell!!
I wonder what delightful number would be produced should something like the Blaster virus be unleashed on the network?
A death metal remix of Mozart perhaps?
Yet another reason to not run Windows Servers folks - think of your poor ears!
throw new NoSignatureException();
...what does it mean when Wagner comes on?
Anyone who's been sat next to a noisy server has probably been doing this for years. I found I became rapidly attuned to normal disk activity patterns, and could detect unusual goings on very quickly.
I also used to be able to recognise the connect speed of analogue modems by listening the negotiation, but that was many moons ago..
I think the point of converting logs to music is the human ear is better at picking up patterns than a pair of eyes. If you hear a melody in the beginning of the day, and hear that same melody at the end of the day you will recognize it. A melody could be 200 lines of sequential log. I doubt someone could visually remember 200 lines of log.
I think this is an excellent idea.