A Survey on Information Visualization for Network and Service Management

Network and service management encompasses a set of activities, methods, procedures, and tools, whose ultimate goal is to guarantee the proper functioning of a networked system. Computational tools are essential to help network administrators in their daily tasks, and information visualization techniques are of great value in such context. In essence, information visualization techniques associated to visual analytics aim at facilitating the tasks of network administrators in the process of monitoring and maintaining the network health. This paper surveys the use of information visualization techniques as a tool to support the network and service management process. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), we provide a historical overview and discuss the current state of the art in the field. We present a classification of 285 articles and papers from 1985 to 2013, according to an information visualization taxonomy, as well as a network and service management taxonomy. Finally, we point out future research directions and opportunities regarding the use of information visualization in network and service management.