Inspiration

Inspiration can be found all around us. Sometimes it's just a matter of taking a moment to realize the treasures found around us. One example I often give is the relation of cars on a highway to network traffic analysis. When you drive down the highway, you expect to see many different types of cars around you. If you saw all the same type of car, you'd find it quite strange. Network traffic is the same. It should appear quite random/all the packets should be different from one another. If we start seeing a bunch of traffic that correlates strongly with a bunch of other traffic (in other words, it looks the same), then that is anomalous. An interesting application of a principle from the analog world to the digital world.