Monitoring the health of computer networks with visualization: VAST 2012 Mini Challenge 1 award: “Efficient use of visualization”

The complex computer networks of large organisations contain many machines of many types, used in many geographic locations. Although system administrators should monitor the health of each machine, they need to do so within the context of the whole computer network. Our visualization presents the health of a fictitious financial institution's computer network at a snapshot in time and over a time range, and preserves the important aspects of each facility's administrative and geographic context. Using the “Bank of Money” VAST Challenge dataset, our visualization allowed us to correctly identify several areas of concern, as well as hypothesise about their causes.