Cool weathermap idea

tman · Post by **tman** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 6:53 am

I've had a thought that may (or may not be!) possible for a future version of weathermap.

I would be incredibly useful for netadmins to be able to see traffic flow levels over a period of time. Would it be possible to be able to output a sequential series of images (maybe every time the data is refreshed) and then be able to play them back in sequence. This would create an animation of the traffic over a (user-defined) time period.

I understand there maybe space issues with the amount of image files, but you could roll-off the oldest ones based on how long the admin wants to keep the data for.

Not sure how workable this would be, but it sounds cool.

knobdy · Post by **knobdy** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 9:41 am

If I understand the idea correctly, I'll second your wish to add this functionality.

The one weathermap I have of our WAN links so clearly illustrates a major issue we have that I would almost like to set my manager in front of it and make him watch it all day. If I could provide him with a slide show of sorts - a "weathermap report" - that would be awesome.

Howie · Post by **Howie** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:03 am

tman wrote:I've had a thought that may (or may not be!) possible for a future version of weathermap.

I would be incredibly useful for netadmins to be able to see traffic flow levels over a period of time. Would it be possible to be able to output a sequential series of images (maybe every time the data is refreshed) and then be able to play them back in sequence. This would create an animation of the traffic over a (user-defined) time period.

I understand there maybe space issues with the amount of image files, but you could roll-off the oldest ones based on how long the admin wants to keep the data for.

Not sure how workable this would be, but it sounds cool.

You can do this right now, just not from the user-interface. See the section of thread starting here for some info about doing this on a unix system with cron, find and ImageMagick.

I have found that this type of animation is not as exciting or useful as you might think, though. Maybe that's just the nature of the data on my network. I would definitely suggest trying to use gradient SCALE lines if you try this, otherwise all you get is a flickering mess.

That said, the guys who run The Gathering have/had a nice AVI of weathermap for the whole weekend for this year's event, and that was pretty cool.

_JPL_ · Post by **_JPL_** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 9:08 am

Howie wrote:I would definitely suggest trying to use gradient SCALE lines if you try this, otherwise all you get is a flickering mess.

Just what do you mean by gradient SCALE lines? In Imagemagick?

Howie · Post by **Howie** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 9:37 am

_JPL_ wrote:
Howie wrote:I would definitely suggest trying to use gradient SCALE lines if you try this, otherwise all you get is a flickering mess.
Just what do you mean by gradient SCALE lines? In Imagemagick?

No, in Weathermap. You can specify SCALE lines with either one or two colours.

Code: Select all

SCALE 0 20  0 0 0  0 0 255

So that between 0 and 20% usage, it smoothly fades from black to blue (in this example). If you make sure that the 20-40 (or whatever) starts with blue too, then as a link changes over time, it's more likely to make a meaningful animation. If you use the default 'banded' colour scheme (with one colour per SCALE line), you just get a lot of flickering arrows as the traffic changes.

Give it a try, and you'll see what I mean. I should do a couple of example maps for the website

This question comes up fairly often...

_JPL_ · Post by **_JPL_** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:02 am

OK, I see. I'm going to do that. Sounds like it looks nicer.
One other quick question in regards to something you said in another thread. What is the --bulge command line option of weathermap? I looked in the CLI documentation but it mentioned nothing like this.

Howie · Post by **Howie** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:22 am

_JPL_ wrote:OK, I see. I'm going to do that. Sounds like it looks nicer.
One other quick question in regards to something you said in another thread. What is the --bulge command line option of weathermap? I looked in the CLI documentation but it mentioned nothing like this.

It's an (the only?) undocumented feature in weathermap, left over from when I first played with animation. Unfortunately, you can't use it from the cacti plugin, because there's no way to specify it in a config file...

What --bulge does is take the width of the LINK as specified in the config file, then multplies that by the percentage usage. The effect is that a 0% used link is a thin line, and the same link at 100% usage is the full size arrow. When it's animated, you get this quite nice bulging effect as traffic builds up in your network. If you set your link WIDTH lines to be a little bigger than normal, it's more effective.

It's just there as an experimental thing from a 18 months ago, but I think it should still work OK. There are no parameters, it's just --bulge

Howie · Post by **Howie** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:36 am

In case anyone is searching, and wants to try this stuff, I wrote up a fuller article about it on the new Weathermap site, including a couple of examples: http://www.network-weathermap.com/articles/animation

fmangeant · Post by **fmangeant** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:58 am

The videos look terrific

Cacti

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