Introspecting network behavior with mixed reality
Meghan Clark, Mark Newman, Prabal K. Dutta · Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking · 2022
The operation of wireless devices is often affected by their physical locations and spatial relationships to other objects and phenomena in the environment. As devices become increasing small and mobile, these relationships can change rapidly. We need tools that can provide an at-a-glance operating picture of each moment and highlight spatial patterns. Such insights are poorly supported by existing tools that abstract away the physical reality of the underlying network. Fortunately, recent advances in localization technologies and mixed reality platforms provide an opportunity for a new approach: mixed reality network introspection. Mixed reality allows users to see network traffic situated directly in the real world, taking advantage of human spatial intuition and visual processing to quickly identify behavior of interest. We propose an architecture for mixed reality network introspection, and implement a prototype called XRShark, a network visualizer with augmented reality and virtual reality modes. Initial evaluations of XRShark show promise in enabling users to identify behaviors of local networks that would be difficult to detect using traditional tools.