| Introduction | Whats New | Conceptual | Artistic | Geographic | Cables & Satellites | Traceroutes |
| Census | Topology | Info Maps | Info Landscapes | Info Spaces | ISP Maps | Weather Maps |
| Wireless | Web Site Maps | Surf Maps | MUDs & Virtual Worlds | Historical |


Network Weather Maps

These maps provide snaps shot views of network performance and traffic flows in near real-time. They often these maps also act as an interface for users to acess more detailed statistics by clicking on a link or node.

Click to see the current CESNET2 weather map

Shown above is an example of the weather map for the CESNET2 network serving the education and research community in the Czech Republic from the 24th of January 2002. This map shows traffic load for links in the network over the previous ten minutes by colour coding of the arrow.

This is a real-time weather map of the Abilene network produced by Network Operations Center at Indiana University.

The Abilene network is part of the Internet2 project linking US universities with a very fast, high-capacity network
Abilene weather map - click for larger image


GARR-B network weather map - click for larger image

Weather maps can also use non-geographic, topological diagrams to represent the network structure.

This example diagram shows the traffic load on the GARR-B network in Italy.

 

Uninett - click for larger image
Uninett - click for larger image
These are dynamic network weather maps of the backbone of Uninett, serving the education and research sector in Norway. The maps show the network capacity by line thickness and daily traffic load by line colour at different geographic scales.

Here is another nice example of a weather map which presents network load using a topology diagram.

The diagram shows the performance on the NORDUnet network, which is the research and education network connecting Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

 

NORDUnet load map - click for larger image

GRNET - Click to see the current weather map

This is the weather map for the GRNET, the education and research network for Greece.

Clicking on individual link arrows brings up more detailed traffic graphs.

Matrix NetSystems produces an animated map called the Internet Weather Report (IWR), which dynamically maps the condition of the Internet measured by timing network latencies six times a day from their HQ in Texas to over four thousand domains around the world. Shown below are three frames from an IWR of East Asia. To fully appreciate the dynamic nature of IWR, see the animated maps in action.

Internet Weather Report - click for larger image

Matrix NetSystems also produces a wide range of real-time Internet performance statistics in its Internet Ratings and Internet Average services.


 

For more information on these types of maps see the Mappa.Mundi Magazine article "Mostly Cloudy, Clearing Later: Network Weather Maps", from December 2001.

Also couple of short articles from a few years ago on the usefulness of these real-time Internet monitors - "Net Forecast: Cloudy, but Clearing" and "Are Net Weather Reports A Snow Job?".

For more resources check out interesting web sites for Internet monitoring, maintained by Les Cottrell.

 

| Introduction | Whats New | Conceptual | Artistic | Geographic | Cables & Satellites | Traceroutes |
| Census | Topology | Info Maps | Info Landscapes | Info Spaces | ISP Maps | Weather Maps |
| Wireless | Web Site Maps | Surf Maps | MUDs & Virtual Worlds | Historical |

 

Want to know more?
Why not check out the new book of the Atlas

Learn more or buy the book...

 

(© Copyright - Martin Dodge, 2004)