They say it is “a live broadcast of Internet statistics, as collected by Pingdom from over 700,000 users across the world”. Pingdom has a map called “The State of the Internet”. It’s all about the collection of data, and the more you have the better. Just click on some of the maps below and you will quickly see the association between data and geography on your screen. That may include the locations of fire hydrants in a city or the presence of data centers around the globe.Īlthough the term is not commonly used in this context, you could say that maps that display internet outages are also examples of GIS technology. As explained in the Techopedia article “How GIS Can Put Your Organization on the Map”, GIS combines data collection and management, spatial or geographic analysis, and a visual display to give a broad view of what is happening in a given geographical area. This is the power of geographical information systems (GIS). Today’s capable computers can now easily monitor these data points, gather them into a unified system, and associate them with geographical locations. Any number of other problems may be defined and recognized as they happen. We’ll discuss the concept of global internet visualization and provide a few examples.Īs we speak, internet problems are occurring worldwide. Some are used only to demonstrate the global reach of internet security services, while others can provide useful, real-time information. But what if you could see the whole picture? That’s the idea behind internet tracking dashboards. As much as we like data, it’s very easy to become lost in it.