Homenet3D: a new view on home network state

Although it performs an increasingly important role in our lives, the home network remains a bit of a mystery when end users wish to know what is “happening on the inside.” This article introduces Homenet3D, an open source project that allows users to view their home network´s state as objects in 3D space within a web browser window. Homenet3D maps quantitative state to the shape, size, spin, bounce, and/or color of selected objects to qualitatively communicate what is happening on the network. We describe our Homenet3D implementation for routers running OpenWRT, and discuss the potential for visualizing multirouter/ multi-subnet home networks.