Abstract
Internet routing involves frequent interconnections between countries and regions. Analyzing network links and routing propagation is crucial for optimizing performance and making informed business decisions. However, existing visual analysis systems lack comprehensive multi-perspective analysis, hindering experts’ ability to effectively analyze routing dynamics and activities. Few studies have explored the effective integration of 2D and 3D analysis techniques for routing data. We introduce ASRelVis, a novel system that combines 3D representations of autonomous system routing relationships with 2D ASCone hierarchical views tailored to BGP route updates. These representations are seamlessly linked using interaction techniques, creating a perceptually uniform interactive space. Through collaboration with domain experts, we address challenges in data presentation and interaction. ASRelVis integrates 2D and 3D visualizations, guiding exploration based on 2D overviews. Case studies and expert interviews demonstrate its effectiveness and utility for analyzing border gateway protocol routing data.
Graphic abstract
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Routing Information Service: https://www.ripe.net/analyse/internet-measurements/routing-information-service-ris/.
RouteViews: https://www.routeviews.org/routeviews/.
ASRank: https://asrank.caida.org/.
References
Al-Musawi B, Branch P, Armitage G (2017) BGP anomaly detection techniques: a survey. IEEE Commun Surv Tutor 19(1):377–396. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2016.2622240
Arora S, Hu W, Kothari PK (2018) An analysis of the t-SNE algorithm for data visualization. In: Proceedings of the conference on learning theory, pp 1455–1462
Biersack E, Jacquemart Q, Fischer F, Fuchs J, Thonnard O, Theodoridis G, Tzovaras D, Vervier P-A (2012) Visual Analytics for BGP monitoring and prefix Hijacking identification. IEEE Netw 26(6):33–39. https://doi.org/10.1109/MNET.2012.6375891
Candela M, Bartolomeo MD, Battista GD, Squarcella C (2018) Radian: visual exploration of traceroutes. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 24(7):2194–2208. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2017.2716937
Chang B, Sun G, Li T, Huang H, Liang R (2023) MUSE: visual analysis of musical semantic sequence. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 29(9):4015–4030. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2022.3175364
Colitti L, Battista GD, Mariani F, Patrignani M, Pizzonia M (2005) Visualizing interdomain routing with BGPlay. J Graph Algorithms Appl 9(1):117–148. https://doi.org/10.7155/jgaa.00102
Cortese PF, Di Battista G, Moneta A, Patrignani M, Pizzonia M (2006) Topographic visualization of prefix propagation in the internet. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 12(5):725–732. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2006.185
Cui G, Zhou J, Yang C, Liu Z (2020) Adaptive graph encoder for attributed graph embedding. In: Proceedings of the ACM sigkdd international conference on knowledge discovery & data mining, pp 976–985. https://doi.org/10.1145/3394486.3403140
Filipov V, Arleo A, Miksch S (2023) Are we there yet? A roadmap of network visualization from surveys to task taxonomies. Comput Graph Forum 42(6):1–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14794
Fischer F, Fuchs J, Vervier P-A, Mansmann F, Thonnard O (2012) VisTracer: a visual analytics tool to investigate routing anomalies in traceroutes. In: Proceedings of the international symposium on visualization for cyber security, pp 80–87. https://doi.org/10.1145/2379690.2379701
Gates AJ, Ke Q, Varol O, Barabási A-L (2019) Nature’s reach: narrow work has broad impact. Nature 575(7781):32–34. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03308-7
Grover A, Leskovec J (2016) Node2vec: scalable feature learning for networks. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, pp 855–864. https://doi.org/10.1145/2939672.2939754
Holten D (2006) Hierarchical edge bundles: visualization of adjacency relations in hierarchical data. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 12(5):741–748. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2006.147
Holten D, Van Wijk JJ (2009) Force-directed edge bundling for graph visualization. Comput Graph Forum 28(3):983–990. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01450.x
Hong J, Hnatyshyn R, Santos EAD, Maciejewski R, Isenberg T (2024) A survey of designs for combined 2D+3D visual representations. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 30(6):2888–2902. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3388516
Huffaker B, Plummer D, Moore D, Claffy K (2002) Topology discovery by active probing. In: Proceedings of symposium on applications and the internet workshops, pp 90–96. https://doi.org/10.1109/SAINTW.2002.994558
Huston G, Rossi M, Armitage G (2011) Securing BGP - a literature survey. IEEE Commun Surv Tutor 13(2):199–222. https://doi.org/10.1109/SURV.2011.041010.00041
Jiang Q, Sun G, Li T, Tang J, Xia W, Zhu S, Liang R (2024) Qutaber: task-based exploratory data analysis with enriched context awareness. J Vis 27(3):503–520. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12650-024-00975-1
Jin J (2018) BGP route leak prevention based on BGPsec. In: Proceedings of IEEE vehicular technology conference, pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/VTCFall.2018.8690840
Jonker M, Pras A, Dainotti A, Sperotto A (2018) A first joint look at DoS attacks and BGP blackholing in the wild. In: Proceedings of the internet measurement conference, pp 457–463. https://doi.org/10.1145/3278532.3278571
Lad M, Massey D, Zhang L (2006) Visualizing internet routing changes. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 12(6):1450–1460. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2006.108
Lad M, Oliveira R, Massey D, Zhang L (2007) Inferring the origin of routing changes using link weights. In: Proceedings of IEEE international conference on network protocols, pp 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNP.2007.4375840
Lhuillier A, Hurter C, Telea A (2017) FFTEB: edge bundling of huge graphs by the fast Fourier transform. In: Proceedings of IEEE Pacific visualization symposium, pp 190–199. https://doi.org/10.1109/PACIFICVIS.2017.8031594
Luckie M, Huffaker B, Dhamdhere A, Giotsas V, Claffy K (2013) AS relationships, customer cones, and validation. In: Proceedings of the ACM internet measurement conference, pp 243–256. https://doi.org/10.1145/2504730.2504735
Mahajan R, Wetherall D, Anderson T (2002) Understanding BGP misconfiguration. In: Proceedings of the conference on applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications, pp 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/633025.633027
Marzialetti L, Candela M, Di Battista G (2018) Upstream visibility: a multi-view routing visualization. In: Proceedings of the international symposium on visual information communication and interaction, pp 80–87. https://doi.org/10.1145/3231622.3231632
McGuffin MJ, Servera R, Forest M (2024) Path tracing in 2D, 3D, and physicalized networks. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 30(7):3564–3577. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3238989
Moritz D, Fisher D (2018) Visualizing a Million Time Series with the Density Line Chart. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1808.06019arXiv:1808.06019 [cs]
Oberheide J, Karir M, Blazakis D (2006) VAST: visualizing autonomous system topology. In: Proceedings of international workshop on visualization for computer security, pp 71–80. https://doi.org/10.1145/1179576.1179592
Orsini C, King A, Giordano D, Giotsas V, Dainotti A (2016) BGPStream: a software framework for live and historical BGP data analysis. In: Proceedings of the internet measurement conference, pp 429–444. https://doi.org/10.1145/2987443.2987482
Perozzi B, Al-Rfou R, Skiena S (2014) DeepWalk: Online learning of social representations. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, pp 701–710. https://doi.org/10.1145/2623330.2623732
Raynor J, Crnovrsanin T, Bartolomeo SD, South L, Saffo D, Dunne C (2023) The state of the art in BGP visualization tools: a mapping of visualization techniques to cyberattack types. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 29(1):1059–1069. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2022.3209412
Shen L, Tai Z, Shen E, Wang J (2024) Graph exploration with embedding-guided layouts. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 30(7):3693–3708. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3238909
Teoh ST, Ma K-L, Wu SF, Zhao X (2002) Case study: interactive visualization for internet security. In: Proceedings of IEEE visualization, pp 505–508. https://doi.org/10.1109/VISUAL.2002.1183816
Teoh ST, Ranjan S, Nucci A, Chuah C-N (2006) BGP eye: a new visualization tool for real-time detection and analysis of BGP anomalies. In: Proceedings of international workshop on visualization for computer security, pp 81–90. https://doi.org/10.1145/1179576.1179593
Ulmer A, Sessler D, Kohlhammer J (2021) ProBGP: progressive visual analytics of live BGP updates. Comput Graph Forum 40(3):37–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14287
Ulmer A, Schufrin M, Sessler D, Kohlhammer J (2018) Visual-interactive identification of anomalous IP-block behavior using geo-IP data. In: Proceedings of IEEE symposium on visualization for cyber security, pp 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/VIZSEC.2018.8709182
Ulmer A, Kohlhammer J, Shulman H (2017) Towards enhancing the visual analysis of interdomain routing. In: Proceedings of international conference on information visualization theory and applications, pp 209–216
Vervier P-A, Thonnard O (2013) SpamTracer: How stealthy are spammers? In: Proceedings IEEE international conference on computer communications, pp 3477–3482. https://doi.org/10.1109/INFCOM.2013.6567184
Wallinger M, Archambault D, Auber D, Nöllenburg M, Peltonen J (2022) Edge-path bundling: a less ambiguous edge bundling approach. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 28(1):313–323. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2021.3114795
Wong T, Jacobson V, Alaettinoglu C (2005) Internet Routing Anomaly Detection and Visualization. In: Proceedings of international conference on dependable systems and networks, pp 172–181. https://doi.org/10.1109/DSN.2005.57
Xia W, Sun G, Zhu Z, Liang P, Zhu S, Wu Y, Liang H, Liang R (2024) RE-IDVIS: person re-identification system based on interactive visualization. In: Proceedings of the international conference on multimedia retrieval, pp 1270–1274. https://doi.org/10.1145/3652583.3657595
Xue Y, Paetzold P, Kehlbeck R, Chen B, Kwan KC, Wang Y, Deussen O (2024) Reducing Ambiguities in Line-Based Density Plots by Image-Space Colorization. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 30(1):825–835. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3327149
Zhong F, Xue M, Zhang J, Zhang F, Ban R, Deussen O, Wang Y (2024) Force-directed graph layouts revisited: a new force based on the T-distribution. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 30(7):3650–3663. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3238821
Zhou Z, Shi C, Shen X, Cai L, Wang H, Liu Y, Zhao Y, Chen W (2021) Context-aware sampling of large networks via graph representation learning. IEEE Transact Vis Comput Graph 27(2):1709–1719. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2020.3030440
Zhou F, Shi R, Zhao Y, Huang Y, Liang X (2013) NetSecRadar: a visualization system for network security situational awareness. In: Proceedings of cyberspace safety and security, pp 403–416. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03584-0_30
Zhu S, Sun G, Shen Y, Zhu Z, Xia W, Chang B, Tang J, Liang R (2024) VAC2: Visual Analysis of Combined Causality in Event Sequences. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3496789
Zielasko D, Weyers B, Hentschel B, Kuhlen TW (2016) Interactive 3D force-directed edge bundling. Comput Graph Forum 35(3):51–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.12881
Acknowledgements
The work is partly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFB3104800), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LR23F020003 and LTGG23F020005), Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang (RF-B2023006), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (62372411, 6242200234). Guodao Sun is the corresponding author.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Tang, J., Chen, J., Jiang, P. et al. ASRelVis: exploring autonomous system relationships through 3D lighthouse layout with linked radial 2D representations. J Vis (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12650-024-01042-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12650-024-01042-5