[tor-dev] introduction and progress toward an interactive version of a Tor metrics website

[Karsten Loesing]

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