The Short Story
The main goal of this plugin is to reliably find problems in the network and raise alerts about them. As a user, you want to be sure that you are getting the service that you're paying for and be notified quickly about network problems, especially those that can lead to compensation for service interruption. For ISPs, this software helps to quickly localize and identify network problems so they can be fixed more rapidly and make users happy.
The NEWS (Network Early Warning System) plugin does this by passively monitoring your BitTorrent performance and checking for changes that might indicate problems with the network. Because a network problem can be anywhere, including your local network, NEWS uses corroboration from multiple users running in the same area (e.g., ISP or country). If enough people see the same problem in the same area, an alarm is raised. The main benefit of our solution is that it uses a common-sense approach of monitoring the natural traffic generated by your BitTorrent client, making detection of anomalies extremely lightweight.

Click for an interactive map of NEWS
coverage.
Our NEWS plugin, which seamlessly installs into the Vuze/Azureus BitTorrent client, can be downloaded from >>>here<<<. Join the 30,392 users who have already done so!
Translators: If you're interested in translating NEWS messages into another langauge, download the messages file, translate it and send it to
.
Updates
- 10/24/2008: We have become aware of a problem with NEWS on Macs related to the Java version -- this will be fixed in the next release. Also, for more updated changelog information, please see the plugin list.
- 7/1/2008: Version 0.8 mainlined. This includes numerous bug fixes.
- 6/24/2008: Version 0.6 released as signed plugin for beta testing on large numbers of users.
- 5/19/2008: Version 0.2 released. This has significant bug fixes and is mature enough for general consumption.
- 5/7/2008: First version released.
For the Technical Crowd
Network anomalies -- unexpected changes in network conditions that significantly impact end-to-end performance -- are some of the most notable of the Internet's growing pains. The ability to identify and characterize the scope of network anomalies is important both for operators and users of the network. Even emergent large-scale services could benefit from such information to optimize performance and reliability. However, determining the existence, let alone the impact, of such network problems is nontrivial.
Previous work has used routing messages or some form of distributed active probing to point out network problems. Our Network Early Warning System (NEWS) implements an alternative, participatory approach to detecting, isolating and reporting network anomalies. The approach is motivated by the observation that peers in large-scale P2P systems collectively provide a unique perspective on network conditions -- one to which today's researchers, network operators and individual users have limited or no access. NEWS passively collects this view from a pervasive P2P service to detect network anomalies without requiring any active measurement, and confirms anomalies through corroboration from multiple vantage points and data sources.
The design of NEWS is based on a dataset derived from a user population containing over 250,000 peers that establish connections to hosts in over 149,000 routable prefixes. By combining a large number of vantage points, multiple performance signals and semantic information, our approach allows low-cost local detection and group corroboration of network problems. We exploit this result to build a scalable service that can successfully identify and diagnose network anomalies in real-time, providing early warnings about emergent and potentially disruptive conditions. NEWS is the first solution to perform anomaly detection from end systems, thus avoiding the logistical and operational challenges faced by infrastructure-based approaches.
At a high level, NEWS performs local anomaly detection and group corroboration to identify and isolate network problems. Its design principles apply to any large-scale system that generates a significant amount of network traffic; the current implementation uses BitTorrent as a host application due to its pervasive coverage and the high volume of network traffic it generates.
NEWS relies on information passively collected by the host application. This information is fed to its anomaly detector, which considers a variety of semantic information to determine whether an anomalous condition is occurring. For each potential anomaly locally detected, NEWS publishes its information to distributed storage. NEWS then corroborates the potential anomaly by reading anomaly reports from the same distributed store. If a sufficient number of reports indicate the same problem at the same time, the anomaly is considered confirmed and an "alarm" is raised for the user/operator. Our NEWS deployment has successfully and accurately detected problems in many networks worldwide, including confirmed issues in the Middle East, South America and North America.
Why NEWS?
NEWS stands for Network Early Warning System. By using natural traffic generated by BitTorrent clients, NEWS is able to detect and localize anomalies quickly and efficiently, allowing network users to ensure they are getting the performance they pay for and network operators to correct potential network problems before they get out of hand.
People
- Fabian E. Bustamante, Faculty PI
- David Choffnes
Resources
- Official signed version (once installed, it automatically updates from Vuze)
- Disclaimer: By downloading and installing this plugin, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.
- License: This software is released under the GPL. The source code can be found in the jar.
- NEWS Forum (for help and discussion)
- Changelog
- Vuze (formerly Azureus) client
- BitTorrent site
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does this really detect anomalies? According to extensive data collected from over 100,000 users worldwide, NEWS should work great. The more people use it, the better it works, so please spread the word!
- Why use the Vuze/Azureus BitTorrent client? For one, it's probably the most popular client in terms of use, so targeting Vuze gives us the greatest potential impact. Additionally, Vuze is Java-based, meaning anyone can run their software (and ours). Finally, Vuze offers a convenient plugin feature, requiring no changes to your existing Vuze client. And once you're running NEWS, it will automatically search for new versions and update itself for you!
- Does this work with my operating system? In short, yes. NEWS relies only on Vuze, so it should work anywhere that Vuze works. If you encounter a problem, please let us know!