Network Map
The ‘Network Map’ visualizes a network by showing the location of a site and its connections (links) to other sites in a geographical context.
Views
The ‘Network Map’ consists of two side-by-side views: The map and the details-panel.
Map
The geographical map visualizes sites and links of a network. Sites are usually displayed as blue circles and links are shown as lines connecting sites.
If a link or site is clicked, its information is presented in the details panel. If more than one site or link is clicked, or if links or sites are too close together to determine which element should be selected, a selection popup appears to select one of the elements.
The map offers statistics information to visualize the number of links and sites in the currently shown map area. The statistics information gets updated when the map stops moving.
Additionally, the map offers a search field. The user can enter the name of a site or link. If an element was found, the map will center on the given element and its information is loaded by the details panel.
If the zoom level is bigger than 11 and the loaded sites have a type of high-rise building, datacenter, factory, or street-lamp, the blue circles are swapped against icons, which visualizes the type of site.
The swapping of icons can be activated or deactivated via a switch on the left-hand site of the map. The switch only becomes visible, if the zoom level is bigger than 9.
The map supports zoom levels between 0 (furthest zoomed out, the entire world is visible) and 18 (most detailed).
Whenever the map stops moving, it updates the URL with its current latitude, longitude, and zoom values. If the ‘Network Map’ application is opened with those URL parameters present, it will display the given area. That way, the map can be bookmarked or shared and will always display the same result.
Details
The details panel shows information specific to the selected element.
Sites offer information about itself, such as name, address and owner, and a short overview of its links and nodes data. The nodes are physical network elements, comparable to the elements of the ‘connect’ application, and offer an interface to other apps via buttons, such as connect, configure, and fault. Currently, those buttons are disabled. By clicking on a link, the given link is loaded into details.
If a link of type ‘microwave’ is selected, the ‘calculate link’ button is available, which opens the Link Calculator in a new tab or page.
Just like the map, the details panel updates the URL if data is loaded. Once again, the ‘Network Map’ application will try to load the element specified in the URL, if one is present.
Connection Error
If no tile or network data is available, an error popup is shown.
Load Network- and Tile-Data
On startup of the sdnc-web container, a topology URL for the network data and a tile URL for the tiles can be specified.
A ready-to-use topology server offering pre-defined network data is available here. There is no way to import generic network data as of now.