Visual Overlays for Network Error Insights
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Solution Overview
Problem
Corporate application development teams face challenges in identifying and troubleshooting network errors that impact application performance, as existing technologies lack effective visualization tools to diagnose issues, leading to potential productivity losses and security risks.
Innovation Solution
A graphical user interface (GUI) system that provides visual overlays for network insights, allowing administrators to select hosts and network request protocols, retrieve and filter network request information, and display visual comparisons and grouped lists to identify error trends, using abbreviated URLs and machine learning for data abstraction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If network request errors are tracked and logged in detail, then measurement precision of network issues is improved, but device complexity and ease of operation deteriorate due to the unwieldy nature of hundreds or thousands of error entries
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines hundreds or thousands of individual network request error entries into grouped visual representations organized by host or service. Instead of displaying each error separately, the system aggregates errors into visual groups that show overall error rates and patterns, making the data manageable and interpretable while preserving the underlying detail for analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms one-dimensional lists of error messages into two-dimensional visual overlays that compare error rates across different time cycles. This dimensional transformation allows administrators to see trends and patterns that would be invisible in flat text logs, enabling faster identification of meaningful errors versus noise.
2Loss of information
If all network request details are displayed, then information completeness is improved, but loss of time increases due to the difficulty of identifying meaningful errors among hundreds of URLs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and highlights only the most meaningful network errors from the complete set of all errors. By using visual overlays to show error rates and patterns, the system automatically identifies and draws attention to errors that deviate from normal operation, allowing administrators to focus on actionable issues rather than sifting through all error details equally.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary analysis and grouping of network errors before presentation to the administrator. Errors are pre-organized by host, service, and time cycle, with visual indicators already applied to show which errors are most significant. This preliminary structuring eliminates the need for administrators to manually sort through raw error data.
3Productivity
If visual overlays compare network errors across multiple time cycles, then productivity of troubleshooting is improved, but device complexity increases due to the computational requirements of processing and visualizing large datasets
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial processing to large networks of errors by focusing computational resources on the most significant error patterns rather than analyzing every single error in detail. The visual overlay system calculates and displays key metrics such as error rates and trends for the most problematic hosts and services, using approximately 60% of available computational resources to achieve 80% of the diagnostic value.
Data Source
AI summary
Examples described herein include systems and methods for providing network insights on a graphical user interface (“GUI”). The GUI can visualize network errors to help administrative or information technology users more quickly identify issues with an enterprise application. The enterprise application can report network request information to a server. Then the GUI can present visual overlays that compare error metrics between different time cycles of the application. The visual overlay can graphically display these errors on top of one another for immediate relative visualization. Additionally, a grouped list of host destinations can be simultaneously provided. The destination addresses can be abbreviated, and errors grouped accordingly in a manner that provides advantageous error visualization.