 syslog
I'm fascinated by maps and all types of information visualization.
I've mentioned before that one of my favorite maps is "The Internet:
01.01.00" by Hal Burch and Bill Cheswick. I have a poster of it
in my office, and it looks to me at different times like a representation
of a neural network or some type of coral or algal formation. According
to the poster text, the graph shown "was created by plotting the
shortest path between a networked computer in Murray Hill, New Jersey
and the 100,121 networks listed in the global Internet register
of Merit Network, Inc. The data were collected on January 1, 2000."
More recent versions of the poster are available (http://www.peacockmaps.com),
but this one remains for me an intriguing (and somewhat inscrutable)
snapshot of the Internet at that time.
A recent article in Science News Online (http://www.sciencenews.org)
states that researchers have discovered that "a remarkable diversity
of complex networks" exhibit a common architecture. The article,
"Sizing Up Complex Webs: Close or Far, Many Networks Look the Same"
by Erica Klarreich, describes this common architecture as consisting
of "a few major hubs with many connections and many minor nodes
with only a few connections". According to the article, this similarity
of structure is seen in at least "four types of complex networks:
the World Wide Web, a network of actors who have been in films together,
networks of proteins with links between those that can bind to each
other, and networks of other cellular molecules with links between
molecules involved in the same biochemical reactions."
In the World Wide Web, for example, the patterns of links between
individual nodes are similar to the patterns of links between clusters
of nodes, between clusters of clusters, etc. Researchers discovered
these similarities by "zooming out" and looking at the networks
from farther and farther away. The article goes on to say that understanding
the architecture of complex networks is important in applications
as diverse as protecting the World Wide Web from hacker attacks
and designing drugs with minimal side effects.
Any tool that helps systems administrators see their systems more
effectively is valuable in dealing with capacity planning, backup
and recovery, and security problems. In this issue, John Ouellette
describes a method of logging and graphing database size to facilitate
capacity planning, and James Price provides an equation to help
you predict the likelihood that your Unix backup tape will contain
readable, usable data. James Pinson describes the "list" utility
-- a variation of "ls" that not only lists files but provides a
file description as well. I hope that these articles along with
the tools and techniques presented elsewhere in this issue will
help you visualize, understand, and manage your systems more effectively.
Sincerely yours,
Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief |
