Background
This project investigates into the application of using google maps as a visualisation frontend for the presentation of data from perfSONAR services. It focuses on the functionality and feature set of what is possible using the google maps api.
To develop an API which will convert the perfSONAR NMWG format into a format which is recognizable by visualization tools such as Google Maps or Yahoo Maps and vice versa. The conversion from NMWG format to Visualization recognizable format is needed to visually display that data and the conversion of the visualization recognizable format to NMWG is needed to conduct test on the fly and get its results.
It will use the web services of PerfSONAR's Lookup Service and PerfSONAR's Measurement Archives in order to fetch the data.
Description
Provide a web interface where it have one text box. In which user can insert any text containing router addresses and plot the traceroute using any Mapping API having utilization of each router. It should conduct asynchronous calls to gather and present the information and enable an intuitive and impressive interface which shows the benefits of the perfsonar framework.
Location
Some known mechanism for obtaining the lat, long information for any ip address is described here. Some study into the accuracy of each model should be conducted and demonstrated.
A flexible architecture should be created whereby one can quickly and easily obtain such info. This may involve creating a MySQL database of such information.
Data Discovery
Possible means by which a user can determine whether or not a router has it's information presented somewhere include:
- Querying a Lookup Service by which the Measurement Archives are registered.
- Querying the Measurement Archives directly to interrogate its contents.
As multiple MA's may exist for numerous routers, it is recommended that a lookup service be queried.
Plotting/Visualisation
Once information regarding a nodes geographical location is determined, one should provide a flexible and modular way of being able to plot such information. Possible choices include Google Maps API, and Yahoo Maps.
The map should not only provide a mechanism to show the geographical locations of each router, but also provide graphs of the routers utilisation and other such meta data. it should also provide facilities to draw both inbound and outbound arrows between known peers with colour coding dependent upon the last known utilisation percentage (as queried from the MA).
The following types of display are required:
- Icons: Display Measurement Points on a World Map, colour coding depending of type of MA; grouping the markers according to Measurement Archive used.
- Lines / Arrows: Display Links between site, colour and or thickness may represent the quality of the link.
- Chart / Graphs: To present a time Series description of a particular Network Metric.
Other
The project should be conducted using Perl with the Template module to provide separation between the presentation and business logic of the tool. XPath and XQuery should also be used extensive to simplify the processing and breakdown of the XML/NMWG messages.
The user frontend should be a web page with dynamic content, extensive use of javascript is required, especially with regards to AJAX technologies and methodologies.
Hooks should be put in place to enable the querying of other metrics such as owamp information and bwctl.
Example
And example client with relevant backends is already in place http://packrat.internet2.edu:8008. Code will be entered into the SLAC SVN repository. Please get a SLAC account in order to access the SVN.
A version under development is available at http://sccs-ytl.slac.stanford.edu:808/
Installation notes can be found at perfSONAR gmaps Installation