Akamai Technologies, the well known web content and application delivery company, now provides a service, which visualizes traffic, conditions, and threats on the internet. The data is presented via Flash applications, available from Akamai's website, for free. One of the apps that allows visitors to see different areas of the world map light up as people log on and off the global network, according to their daily cycle, is the Real-time Web Monitor:
"Akamai monitors global Internet conditions around the clock. With this real-time data we identify the global regions with the greatest attack traffic, cities with the slowest Web connections (latency), and geographic areas with the most Web traffic (traffic density)." Other apps provide info about net usage trends and the status of the Akamai network. Overall, this exercise in information visualization and interface design, while worthy of the approval of Edward Tufte himself, will be a passing curiosity to most people. But keeping in mind that Akamai claims to carry 20% of all the content on the internet, the visualizations provide very relevant information for people who run their websites and applications on top of a truly global content delivery network. Plus, it's shiny.

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