L3DGEWorld 2.1
Overview
L3DGEWorld 2.1 is a data visualisation utility based on Open Arena, a GPL'd game that makes use of
the Quake III Arena (Q3A) game engine. It was initially designed to be a
network monitoring and control application, but can be easily use for other
purposes by developing other input and output daemons [1]. The daemons provided with
L3DGEWorld 2.1 allow monitoring and control of a live network to take place from
within a virtual world created by the L3DGEWorld engine.
L3DGEWorld is the product of a research project aimed at simplifying
two key network management tasks[2]:
- The identification of anomalous traffic patterns
within IP networks, and
- The control of network elements (such as routers and firewalls)
to block anomalous traffic.
L3DGEWorld 2.1, with the provided input and output daemons, creates a
virtual world in which spinning objects represent the rate at which IP packets
are heading towards particular, monitored IP addresses on your network. By
using in-game techniques (in version 2.1 this involves 'shooting a gun at the
spinning object') a network operator can initiate an ACL update to block
undesired traffic. Our current implementation allows multiple participants to
view and interact with the spinning network entities, and can require multiple
participants to concurrently trigger ACL updates.
L3DGEWorld 2.1 also includes 8 new visual effects that can be applied in many
combinations to the in-game entities, enabling many pieces of information to
be conveyed to users simultaneously.
L3DGEWorld 2.1 defines a total of 10 unique entities that map and model
makers can use to intuitively represent a number of distinctly different
devices on the same map.
L3DGEWorld should run on any platform to which Open Arena has been ported, and
the provided source code should make it easy to compile both the server and
clients for unsupported platforms.
Included in this release is an updated version of greymatter, a FreeBSD-based
application that monitors 'greynet' network traffic [3] and feeds real time
information to L3DGEWorld. This new version uses a new UDP based protocol to
convey updates to a L3DGEWorld server, allowing multiple daemons to run on
multiple hosts, all feeding data into the server. L3DGEWorld itself does not
specifically require greymatter, and may be fed real time traffic information
from other external sources. [1]
What's New?
New features since L3DGEWorld 2.0 include:
- New "bounce height" metric.
- New "scale size" metric.
- New "roll sideways" metric.
- New "colour tint" metric.
- New "bounce rate" metric.
- New "play sound" metric.
- New "alternate skin" metric.
- New "alternate model" metric.
- Entity updates now done over UDP.
- Everything has been made more generic, to allow others to make use of
L3DGEWorld for other purposes such as LCMON
Screenshots
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The network overview.
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Another Administrator marking a greynet host
to have an ACL Placed.
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Getting detailed information about the traffic to a particular
greynet host. The traffic shown came from nmap and scp.
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An animation showing the greynet hosts
rotating at various speeds.
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Many different visual metrics being used simultaneously.
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Additional screenshots and videos depicting the metrics available in L3DGEWorld 2.1 can be found here.
System Requirements
L3DGEWorld and it's demonstration utility, fakematter, have been verified
to run in some way, shape or form, on FreeBSD 6.2, Mac OS X 10.4.9, Linux
(Ubuntu 7.04) and Windows XP Platforms (with the addition of cygwin). At this
stage greymatter only runs on FreeBSD.
Client Requirements:
- L3DGEWorld 2.1 distribution
- libSDL and libOpenAL are required on Linux and FreeBSD
- Q3A (and hence OpenArena) capable PC
Server Requirements:
- L3DGEWorld 2.1 distribution
- expect (http://expect.nist.gov/)
- BASH (Bourne Again SHell)
- Q3A dedicated server capable PC
greymatter (input daemon) requirements:
Documentation
Please see the files included in the tarball (available below) for further documentation.
Licensing
L3DGEWorld is copyright (C) 2007, the Centre for Advanced Internet
Architectures, Swinburne University of Technology
L3DGEWorld is distributed under version 2 of the GNU General Public Licence.
Future Work
Planned features for future versions of L3DGEWorld include:
- Maps may be made up of multiple rooms, with a certain number of points required to
enter certain rooms (preventing lower level adminstrators from viewing areas of the network).
- Other input and output daemons will be developed allowing the monitoring and controlling of a larger range of devices.
- No, we really mean it! we are going to get around to this stuff one day.
Authors and Acknowledgments
- Support for the development of L3DGEWorld is provided in part by a grant
from the Cisco University Research Program Fund at Community Foundation
Silicon Valley. The URP project, titled "Anomalous traffic detection and
collaborative network configuration using 3D multiplayer game engines",
is led by Associate Professor Grenville Armitage (CAIA) and supported
by Fred Baker (Cisco).
- L3DGEWorld 2.1 has been developed by Lucas Parry
- The Greymatter input daemon was developed by Lucas Parry and Warren Harrop.
- The `monitorhosts.sh' output daemon and associated files were thrown together by Lucas Parry.
- We have recieved a lot of valuable feedback and testing by Grenville Armitage and Carl Javier.
- Thanks to the OpenArena team, who's game made it possible for us to freely distribute L3DGEWorld as a whole product.
References
- L. Parry "L3DGEWorld 2.1 Input & Output Specifications", CAIA Tech Report, August 2007.
- W. Harrop, G. Armitage, "Real-Time Collaborative Network Monitoring and Control Using 3D Game Engines for Representation and Interaction," in VizSEC'06 Workshop on Visualization for Computer Security, Virginia, USA, October-November 2006.
- W. Harrop, G. Armitage "Defining and Evaluating Greynets (Sparse Darknets)", IEEE 30th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2005) Sydney, Australia, 15-17 November, 2005.
Download
L3DGEWorld 2.1.1 fixes a minor bug that slipped into the L3DGEWorld 2.1 release.
- L3DGEWorld 2.1.1 for Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, and Mac OS X Download (46MB)
- L3DGEWorld 2.1.1 Disk Image File for Mac (exactly the same contents as above, but in Mac disk image) Download (48MB)
- MD5SUMS Download
Previous Versions
Listed below are links to previous versions of L3DGEWorld.
- L3DGEWorld 2.0 (Released June 2007)
- L3DGEWorld 1.5 (Released May 2007)
- L3DGEWorld 1.0 (Released March 2007)
Go back to the L3DGE project
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