Customized Internet Mapping and Picturing

About CIMAP
Customized Internet Mapping and Picturing (CIMAP) is a network visualization tool initially named "Network Visualization Tool" (NVT), and originally designed and implemented during the 2002-2003 academic year by Karim A. Mattar, who was an undergraduate research assistant in the Multimedia Networking & Internet Lab, at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, under the supervision of Professor Lixin Gao.

NVT was eventually renamed CIMAP and further modifications were made and functionalities added during the summer of 2003 by Eugenia (Jane) Shlimovich and Meghan Emilio, both of whom were undergraduate participants in the CRA-W Distributed Mentoring Project and worked under the supervision of Professor Lixin Gao.

This application obtains the information it visualizes from a database of BGP Tables, Relationship Files, and AS Name files, which is maintained by the Multimedia Networking & Internet Lab at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, or from user supplied data files.

Functionalities

The primary functionalities of the CIMAP Application include:
- Infer information about a user-specified AS from data files:
  - Commercial Name
  - Degree
  - Neighbors
  - Originating Prefixes
- Visualize BGP routing paths as well as relationships between a fictional "Source" AS and a user-specified AS.
- Visualize BGP routing paths as well as realtionships between a Tier-One AS and Non-Tier-One AS, or two Non-Tier-One ASes.
- Visualize direct neighbors of a user-specified AS.
- Create a .txt file listing all of an ASes direct and indirect neighbors to a specified depth.
- Generate descriptive statistics files from BGP Table and Relationship File.
  - Create a .txt file containing the total number of ASes.
  - Create a .txt file listing all ASes whose degree is in the user-specified range.
  - Create a .txt file containing the average path length.
  - Create a .txt file listing all prefixes with multiple origins.
- Generate descriptive information files from BGP Table and Relationship File.
  - Create a .txt file listing all ASes.
  - Create a .txt file listing all prefixes.
  - Create a .txt file listing all Tier-one ASes.
  - Create a .txt file listing all non-Tier-one ASes
- Batch AS or IP Address to Commercial Name mapping.