Eve
While stomping around the cDc blog, I came across the Eve. Eve is a network traffic analyzer which gifts its users with a 3D visual representation of the network traffic as it is happening. To be honest the moment I read this a little part of me screamed for joy. I rushed through the site and downloaded the trial version.
I fired it up. Immediately I was present with a myriad of floating cube and flashing orbs zapping back and forth. I gasped; had technology finally caught up with the Hollywood hackers of yesteryear?
Roughly five minutes in, the novelty wore off. Aside from looking pretty, what was the point of this program? Where is my traceroute? What about filters? The ability to 'traverse' your 'network traffic' in 'real time' is an outrageous exaggeration. The interface provides you with a meager amount of useful information; mouse over a node to see its IP address, memorize the packet color scheme and you can tell if you have TCP, UDP, or ICMP traffic. The placement of nodes in the three dimensional view has no correlation to any particular aspect of the network. In fact, the only useful feature I could find was the 'Stats Graph' which, ultimately, is a toned down version of the Networking tab in the Windows Task Manager. To add to the debauchery, the program crashed twice, with two different errors.
The site states: "By allowing admins to visually inspect network traffic they quickly become accustomed to typical network activity, notice flow patterns and spot bottlenecks or trouble spots." SCAM! This is nothing more than a marketing gimmick to pawn off crappy software to wannabe hackers and kids who think that running this program will make people think they are sexy. In the end, Eve would be better off if it followed the path of the Sonar program for xscreensaver.
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