Demonstrating Customisation Markup in the Siren Songs Sonification System
Luke Skarth-Hayley, Julie Greensmith · 2019
Live and retrospective analysis of network traffic is a challenging task for IT Departments and Network Operating Centres. Examining graphs and log files is time-consuming, and alerts can be missed. Network sonification provides an 'at-a-listen' state of the network that, during normal operation, is easy to ignore and non-fatiguing for listeners, and during attacks surfaces the type of attack with a unique sound signature. Prior research into network sonification lacks a formal grammar and aesthetic considerations. This demo paper presents the technical details of Siren Songs, a network sonification system which translates network traffic and attacks into a customisable MIDI output that can feed into any MIDI instrument or Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). The related research provoked interesting questions about the aural bandwidth of listeners, and the system as presented enables bespoke sonifications for future investigation of aural bandwidth in network monitoring.