Case study: 3D displays of Internet traffic

The explosive growth in world-wide communications, especially the Internet, has highlighted the need for techniques to visualize network traffic. The traditional node and link network displays work well for small datasets but become visually cluttered and uninterpretable for large datasets. A natural 3D metaphor for displaying world-wide network data is to position the nodes on a globe and draw arcs between them coding the traffic. This technique has several advantages of over the traditional 2D displays, it naturally reduces line crossing clutter, provides an intuitive model for navigation and indication of time, and retains the geographic context. Coupling these strengths with some novel interaction techniques involving the globe surface translucency and arc heights illustrates the usefulness for this class of displays.