[Discuss] Visualizing LAN traffic

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:34 PM, Tom Metro <tmetro-blu at vl.com> wrote:
>...
> I've heard of tools that let you listen to LAN traffic, where supposedly
> you can easily hear the differences when something unusual happens. But
> I'd expect such a tool to get annoying fast.

I think you might be thinking about "Peep: The Network Auralizer".

http://peep.sourceforge.net/intro.html

The paper (http://peep.sourceforge.net/docs/lisa2000.pdf) was best
student paper at the USENIX LISA 2000 conference.   The paper
discusses the issue of annoyance.  They deal with it by using natural
sounds (bird calls, rain, water, etc.) to represent different events.
 The theory is that people find those sounds generally pleasant, but
at the same time expect them to occur in a seemingly random way.
What you get is an aural background that might range from a quiet
meadow to a noisy rain forest.   I don't know if the idea ever went
anywhere after the paper was published, but it sounds plausible to me.

Bill Bogstad