What's new on GeoCables

№15 A more accurate label for alerts judged to be false

On the event page, alerts assessed as a probable false positive now say what actually happened: other measurements did not confirm the event. The previous phrase, "only one probe saw it", did not fit every case.

№14 Traces from every measurement point get city and provider right away

Some traces arrived without the cities and providers of intermediate nodes and were completed later and only partly. These details are now filled in as soon as a trace is received.

№12 Cable alert assessment: more accurate and based on the moment of the event

Every cable alert carries an assessment: a widespread event, a route change, or a probable false positive. It now relies on measurements taken at the time of the event rather than later, and uses the same comparison of two path measurements as the alerts themselves. The assessments that were missing for alerts from August and September have been filled in.

№13 Route nodes no longer lose their country and city

Some intermediate nodes on the route and transit maps were losing their country, city and provider even though these had been known before. The cause is fixed, and about 900 such nodes have been restored.

№11 Cable alerts now close by the same rule they open by

When we decide whether a cable alert is over, both of our measurements of the path are now taken into account, the same way as when the alert opens. Before, a single spike in one measurement could delay closing an alert even though the cable was already working as usual.

№10 Cable alerts are more accurate

A cable now counts as slowed down only when both of our measurements of the path show a higher delay. A single spike in one measurement while the other is normal no longer produces a flag or an alert. The usual delay we compare against is more accurate too: such spikes no longer inflate it, so real slowdowns stand out better.

№6 Country page: a scene of the latest outage and clearer labels

The internet status page of a country now plays a scene of the latest outage next to the summary, when the outage is going on or happened in the last seven days: where it is, how the signal dropped and recovered, who was affected. Labels now use the same words as the event page: the kind of outage takes the share of affected users into account, providers go by their familiar names, and "signal dip" is replaced by the share of the country's address blocks that stopped answering.

№7 Search fields no longer fill themselves

A browser could put a saved email address into the search field on the cable monitoring page (mobile view) and on the transit map. These fields, like the other search fields on the site, are now filled only by you.

№8 Cable monitoring: page fits the window and the map follows the theme

The cable monitoring page no longer shows an empty band under the map, and the map now switches together with the light or dark theme, without reloading the page.

№9 Live map: a clear return to the previous view

The live map no longer opens on a zoom you left long ago. Your previous view comes back only if you were on the map within the last half hour, and then a hint with a "Show the whole world" button appears at the top. Otherwise the map opens on the whole world. The reset button is now called "Whole world · reset".

№5 Home page: the country outage card only for fresh major outages

The outage card at the top of the home page is now shown only while a major outage is going on and for six hours after it ends. Outages that affected a small part of a country's networks no longer take the top of the page. All events remain in the "last 24 hours" block and in the events feed.

№1 Site versions and the "What's new" page

The site now has a version number, shown at the bottom of every page. Changes are published as numbered releases, and the "What's new" page records what changed in each one.

№2 Maintenance of the internal part of the site

This change affects only the internal part of the site; nothing changes for visitors.

№3 Events feed: a route schematic, filters and major events highlighted

The events feed is easier to read and has a look of its own: it is drawn as a route through time. Each day is a station and each event a node on the line. The shape of a node shows the kind of event (country, cable, land route), its fill shows how serious it was. Several events at one place within a day branch off a single node. You can filter the feed by kind of event, keep only major events, or find a country or a cable by name. The page explains what counts as a major, medium or minor event.

№4 Live map: a clearer description of the "Event impact" layer

The live map layer that joins earthquakes, storms and other natural events to nearby cables now explains itself in plain words: how many events and cables were checked, how many times a cable got slower after an event, and what each line colour means.