From OpenNMS

• The idea of a surveillance view is to give "at-a-glance" information about the monitored devices

Why a surveillance view

When networks are larger and contain devices of different priority, it becomes interesting to show at a glance how the "whole system" is working.

The surveillance view aims to do that. By using categories, you can define a matrix which allows to aggregate monitoring results.

Imagine you have 10 servers with 10 internet connections and some 5 pcs with Dsl lines:

The whole idea is to give somebody at a glance a hint on where the trouble is.

The matrix-type of display allows a significantly higher aggregation than the simple list.

In addition, the surveillance view shows nodes rather than services - an important tidbit of information when you look at categories. At a glance, you want to know how many of my servers have an issue rather than how many services in this category have an issue.