introduction and progress toward an interactive version of a Tor metrics website
Hi Everyone, I'm a mathematician/coder/visualization person living in San Francisco. I've been in contact with Karsten Loesing about making more interactive graphs for the tor metrics website. I've made some progress which can be viewed here: http://tigerpa.ws/tor_metrics/ You can select a region in the bottom graph to set the time domain of the top graph. You can click on the buttons on the right to add lines to the graph. It's still a work in progress, so there are still bugs and I've open to suggestions on making it better. Currently it only shows graphs for network/relays data. I'm planning on adding the ability to view graphs for all the other data on the current tor metrics site. The code lives here: https://github.com/tigerpaws/tor_metrics Thanks, Walter -- Walter Kim, Ph.D. Mathematician and Engineering Contractor, San Francisco +1-415-509-1429 (mobile) wltr.km@gmail.com
Hi Walter, On 7/5/12 6:21 PM, Walter Kim wrote: Oops, your mail got lost somewhere between the Florence trip and recovering from it. Sorry for the late reply.
I'm a mathematician/coder/visualization person living in San Francisco.
I've been in contact with Karsten Loesing about making more interactive graphs for the tor metrics website. I've made some progress which can be viewed here:
Thanks for announcing your work here. As I said before, these graphs are really cool! Great work! I just added a link to the metrics start page and to the network page. I'd really love to replace the current metrics graphs with yours once they're ready.
You can select a region in the bottom graph to set the time domain of the top graph. You can click on the buttons on the right to add lines to the graph.
I wonder, can you somehow add navigation buttons to zoom in and out and move forward/backward in time? The default view could show the last three months (similar to how the current metrics graphs are implemented) and then the user could tweak the graph to their needs.
It's still a work in progress, so there are still bugs and I've open to suggestions on making it better. Currently it only shows graphs for network/relays data. I'm planning on adding the ability to view graphs for all the other data on the current tor metrics site.
The code lives here: https://github.com/tigerpaws/tor_metrics
Can you add the GitHub link to a footer in your graphs page, maybe including a direct link to the issues page? I hope that you'll get more feedback if people can easily file a bug or feature request. I'm also cc'ing Arturo who wrote Atlas. Atlas shows information on currently running relays. That website has graphs on a relay's bandwidth usage over time. It's fed with Tor metrics data, too, so I could imagine that sharing code or even just ideas for visualizing that data might be beneficial. Here's an example of graphs in Atlas: http://atlas.torproject.org/#details/F2044413DAC2E02E3D6BCF4735A19BCA1DE9728... Thanks! Karsten
Hi Karsten, Arturo, and others, Sorry for being out of touch for a couple weeks; I had some day job deadlines. I've added more data (bandwidth, users) to site I'm working on: http://tigerpa.ws/tor_metrics/ And set the default time frame to be the last 3 months. I have on my list to do the following: 1. Buttons to zoom in/out and pan forward/backwards in time. 2. Add GitHub repo link for code and issues. 3. Deal with making the UI for accessing countries better (e.g. show the top countries and a drop down menu for the rest). 4. Get the performance data up. 5. Make the UI labels on the right for showing different graphs easier to read when the selected/colored. 6. Make the graph line continue with the previous value if the data value is null. Please do submit issues to the GitHub repo page: https://github.com/tigerpaws/tor_metrics for another other things I should add/fix. Arturo, the Atlas site looks really nice. Perhaps once I get all the basic functionality into the site I'm working on, there could be some merging of efforts. I could try to match the Atlas style as well. -Walter
I'm also cc'ing Arturo who wrote Atlas. Atlas shows information on currently running relays. That website has graphs on a relay's bandwidth usage over time. It's fed with Tor metrics data, too, so I could imagine that sharing code or even just ideas for visualizing that data might be beneficial. Here's an example of graphs in Atlas:
http://atlas.torproject.org/#details/F2044413DAC2E02E3D6BCF4735A19BCA1DE9728...
Thanks! Karsten
-- Walter Kim, Ph.D. Mathematician and Engineering Contractor, San Francisco +1-415-509-1429 (mobile) wltr.km@gmail.com
Hi Walter, hi Arturo, On 7/31/12 4:35 AM, Walter Kim wrote:
Hi Karsten, Arturo, and others,
Sorry for being out of touch for a couple weeks; I had some day job deadlines.
I've added more data (bandwidth, users) to site I'm working on: http://tigerpa.ws/tor_metrics/ And set the default time frame to be the last 3 months.
Looks great! I fixed a few things on the metrics part that generates the data you process when looking at your graphs: - JSON files are now cached instead of generating them freshly for each request. This might improve performance of your site up to 1 second for large JSON files (e.g., relays by country). - The last 1--2 days of data are now cut off by default. We might not have accurate data for those dates, so it's better to leave them out. - Bandwidth History by Relay Flags is now on the same scale (bytes per second) as the other Bandwidth lines.
I have on my list to do the following: 1. Buttons to zoom in/out and pan forward/backwards in time. 2. Add GitHub repo link for code and issues. 3. Deal with making the UI for accessing countries better (e.g. show the top countries and a drop down menu for the rest). 4. Get the performance data up. 5. Make the UI labels on the right for showing different graphs easier to read when the selected/colored. 6. Make the graph line continue with the previous value if the data value is null.
Sounds all very useful.
Please do submit issues to the GitHub repo page: https://github.com/tigerpaws/tor_metrics for another other things I should add/fix.
Just added a minor/trivial issue.
Arturo, the Atlas site looks really nice. Perhaps once I get all the basic functionality into the site I'm working on, there could be some merging of efforts. I could try to match the Atlas style as well.
Merging the two sites makes sense to me. Arturo, you once had plans to add more features to Atlas, didn't you? These graphs seem like a good match to extend Atlas' current functionality. But my sense is that you're too busy with deliverables to hack on Atlas, right? (Please correct me if that is not the case!) Maybe we can sketch out a plan for adding new features to Atlas: how's the navigation supposed to look like (e.g., would it make sense to add Walter's site as a new "Statistics" page between "Home" and "About"?), where would new stuff be added in the codebase, etc. Then Walter and other volunteers could start extending Atlas accordingly. I could review changes for obvious bugs and push them to atlas.tpo, unless you'd prefer to do that yourself. Thanks! Karsten
participants (2)
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Karsten Loesing -
Walter Kim