[AusNOG] Network Atlas (AU Help)

[Mehmet Akcin]

hi Ross,

thank you for your message.

As we have explained in our website , www.networkatlas.org -- Network Atlas
is a crowd-sourced near real-time map of the global Internet infrastructure
detailing the world's submarine and terrestrial networks in real time. I am
not claiming we are network planning tool. We are visualization of what
network links are operating, and what not. If a network link is down, what
could be potential backup links people can find capacity, in addition to
that visualizing datacenters, cities where network density (both from
subsea and terrestrial stand point) will enable enterprises to acquire
capacity rapidly.

Network Atlas is only the platform which enables people who has capacity to
visualize it in a way that it can be easily consumed by Enterprise,
Government, and various other agencies. Operational Status, Network Density
Points, and Diverse possibilities are what we are here to "HIGH LEVEL"
display, and let people make decisions based on that. Network Fiber owners
will be able add networks to the map, update listings with more accurate
information and use the atlas' near real-time data to track outages and
identify possible areas of expansion. How are we going to make this data
"Near realtime?" similar to how Google Maps and Waze works. We provide
platform and mechanisms for people to report operational status. At the end
it's all up to to community to help support the initiative, we are going to
have people in various parts of the world, who will be editors with access
to change status of cables, or approve status change requests reporting an
operational issue.

One of the functions we are working on providing direct connection to the
people who can buy a capacity on a given route. We do not take commission
for this, we are not middle man (obviously we are the platform but once the
connection is established, people can continue to talk directly and we want
that, we want companies who do not know how to engage directly with sales
team to find this map useful. In most of places, teams are too small to
have dedicated procurement teams, engineers doing this work and getting
frustrated. We are trying , I am not saying we will be successful here, to
make it easy for them to request a quote., once you will go to website and
say, I want capacity on this link, it will connect you to sales people who
will respond you directly.In future releases we are planning humbly to
"Design my route" function which basically you select pop A and pop B, and
it will make a design recommendation based on information we have and will
give you an option to request a quote.

The members of this list are probably do not need to use this map for these
type of things, but i can assure you , last 6 months i have spent so much
time with Enterprises around the world, helping them transform their
networks, and they are super interested and excited for a tool which can
provide a service which otherwise was a blackbox in the past.

We are intentionally in the state we are with some ambiguity because we are
working with the community on how to develop our product and make it most
useful to most amount of people. Perhaps it is a waste of time and money
for me to work on this from many point of view, but i believe the product
which I envision in 1 year (which I am still crafting every day with new
ideas) is going to be useful to many (again , not saying to experts in here
but those who are trying to become one, as a stepping stone, this too might
be useful...)

thank you for the opportunity to expand and explain more, perhaps I should
create a FAQ in the website and put these answer, and more.

On Sat, Dec 1, 2018 at 11:41 PM Ross Marston <ross at ramtech.net.au> wrote:

> Hi Mehmet,
> I must admit I am at somewhat of a loss to see the benefit of this product
> to anyone other than those who are either, bored and have nothing better to
> do than look at network maps, or those with an interest in harming those
> networks.  I'd be fascinated to hear your view on what it's imagined
> benefit is.  Any user of a supplier's physical network can get information
> from the supplier if needed.  No one else needs to know it IMO.
>
> In my experience so far in life, collating private, sensitive information
> and publishing it publicly, and easily searchable, is nearly always a
> recipe for future disaster.  In my work in InfoSec, I can assure you, I
> don't see any upsides to this sort of info being freely and easily in the
> public domain.  I must admit to also wondering if the developers of this
> product, have considered it's potential negative impact?
> Just my 2c worth...
>
> Kind regards
> Ross Marston
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20181202/7e600df5/attachment.html>