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Abilene Weather Map: Internet Atlas Gallery

The contents of this legacy page are no longer maintained nor supported, and are made available only for historical purposes.

Abilene Weather Map: Internet Atlas Gallery

Abilene Weather Map (using MRTG data)

Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL: http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail Analysis
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Additional Content

Internet Atlas Gallery

Abilene Weather Map (using MRTG data)

Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL: http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail About the Visualization
Visualization Techniques:
(Technique1): Configuration file specifies pixel location of polygonal shapes: circle for each router, bar with half arrowhead for each link.
Key Visualization Mappings:
(Mapping1): 11 core Abilene backbone routers are displayed geographically as labeled circles:
  • STTL = Seattle, WA
  • SCRM = Sacramento, CA
  • LOSA = Los Angeles, CA
  • DENV = Denver, CO
  • KSCY = Kansas City, MO
  • HSTN = Houston, TX
  • IPLS = Indianapolis, IN
  • ATLA = Atlanta
  • WASH = Washington, D.C.
  • NYCM = New York City, NY
  • CLEV = Cleveland, OH
(Mapping2): Blue circle indicates router having active links. Gray circle indicates no active links. Circle is also a hot link to MRTG graphs.
(Mapping3): Link line utilization is colored according to the displayed key.
(Mapping4): Small box near each link indicates an absolute rate of traffic in bytes/second.
(Mapping5): Black appearing on any link bar indicates network errors, and grows logarithmically from base to tip, where the base represents 0.001 percent and the head represents 1 percent errors.
Visualization Tools:
(Tool1): Animated Traffic Map CGI scripts
(Tool2): GD Graphics library
(Tool3): MRTG - Multi Router Traffic Grapher
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Abilene Weather Map: Internet Atlas Gallery

Abilene Weather Map (using MRTG data)

Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL: http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail Credits / Contact Info
Author:
Animated Traffic Map:
Mark Meiss
Copyright 1998,1999, The Trustees of Indiana University

MRTG:
Tobias Oetiker and
Dave Rand
Contact Info:
Comments to:
noctools @ hydra.uits.iu.edu
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Internet Atlas Gallery

Abilene Weather Map (using MRTG data)

Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL: http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail Data
Data Sources:
(Source1) MRTG polls SNMP MIB of each monitored router every five minutes for line utilization and network errors on each router's attached links.
Data Specification:
(Data1) Five minute exponentially decaying sum of moving average of input and output bits per second (Data2) Percent of input and output packets in error or discarded at the router during each five-minute polling interval, multiplied by 1000.
Data Aggregation:
(Aggregate1): MRTG calculates average rate when available and normalizes these to fit in a standard five minute time slot. (Aggregate2): Error values can be calculated as an average of a specified number of historical MRTG polled values.
Data Filters:
None used.
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Internet Atlas Gallery

Abilene Weather Map (using MRTG data)

Mark Meiss
Indiana University Network Operations Center
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (IU)
URL: http://hydra.uits.iu.edu/~abilene/traffic/
Visualization Thumbnail Evaluation
Strengths:
(Strength1): Color-coded, timestamped snapshots of router traffic levels give quick indication of general backbone utilization and health.
(Strength2): Hot links to underlying MRTG graphs offer glimpses of more specific trends and historical averages.
Issues:
(Issue1): Usefulness of display and statistics is limited to cursory overview.
(Issue2): Position of router at SCRM has moved to SNVA. It is not clear how changes in backbone configuration affect the utility of the traffic status animations.
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