Project Description
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC)
Research and Development
Background
I was part of the network monitoring team at Stanford Linear Accelerator from 2010 till 2012. Our team comprised of incredible individuals with diverse skill-set. I got the opportunity to work under Dr Les Cottrell, who was part of the Nobel prize winning group that discovered the quark. During that period i got involved in working at visualization tools for Pinger and Perfsonar
PingER Map
Pinger Worldwide Coverage on Google Maps
PingER (Ping End-to-end Reporting) is tool built under Internet End-to-end Performance Measurement (IEPM) project to monitor end-to-end performance of Internet links. Focus of this project is to measure the Digital Divide from an Internet Performance viewpoint.
Visibility on Deployed Sites
There are various kind of Pinger sites worldwide, this map lets users see their exact locations and gives a bird’s eye view on coverage in a country.
Connection Health between Sites
Ability to see connection health between sites visually can help evaluate network bandwidth in organizations. When seen in reference to other countries, it can also show how good and bad is the internet between countries.
Contact Details
Keeping these sites up to date is a challenge, hence we keep the contact info in our database. This tool helps the admins easily locate and reach out to those in-charge.
Performance Metrics
Connection between PingER sites is measured periodically and various performance metrics can be accessed. This helps admins see the interconnectivity between regions and specific stats on the network.
Historical Data between Sites
Sometime connections between sites improve or decline based on various scenarios. Tool provides this valuable insight for the network admins and researchers.
Range Configuration
As different countries have different standard internet speeds, it helps set different ranges for different areas. e.g Korea vs Zimbabwe would be two very different set of scales.
Results and Success
This tool helps the team keep the sites up to date, monitor network health world wide and provides understanding on problem areas. There are numerous applications of this data. e.g We used it to help some African nations pin point exact locations where if they setup telecom towers, would get significant boast in internet connectivity.
