[smokeping-users] Noob - question

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Dave,

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, David Anderson - Macomb wrote:

> So for something like:
> 
> 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 (no loss) - I would expect to get a plot of green
> 2, with a little gray smoke below (if any) and a lot of smoke above (unsure
> of gray or blackness).

Actually I think you will get a green dot at 2, very dark grey or 
black smoke below, and three grey bands, getting progressively lighter, 
above (2-3, 3-4, 4-5).

> What I miss is the understanding of a graph that displays a green bar at 
> 2 with nothing but black below it and no gray above it?

1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2 would do that, I think.

> Or Green with dark black going to light black only below it?

1,2,3,4,5,5,5,5,5, if I understand you correctly.

> Or Green with dark black evenly on either side of it?

1,1,1,1,3,5,5,5,5.

> Does the farther away from the median denote the darkness of gray or 
> black?

Yes. If the median is n=5, then between n=4 and n=6 is drawn very dark; 
n=3 to n=7 is dark grey; n=2 to n=8 is medium grey and n=1 to n=9 is light 
grey.

> so values of: 1,1,1,1,5,10,20,300,400 (no loss) = a plot of 5, with a 
> little gray below, and a lot of black above reaching very high?

Well, the graph will scale to accomodate the 400, so the green dot will be 
very near the Y axis and you'll hardly be able to see the smoke below it, 
and also the dark smoke up to 10 and 20. You'll see mid grey from 20 to 
300, and light grey from 300 to 400.

> Sorry for the noob question, but I believe I am experiencing hardware 
> problems and if I am going to use SP to help justify my case for the 
> funds needed for new equipment, I will need to be able to explain it 
> (more so than just saying - it looks different than those other ones, so 
> it must be bad! =)

More smoke (wider variation to the extremes) and darker smoke (wider 
variation around the median), packet loss (non-green colours), wide 
variation of medians and entirely missing points are all bad signs in 
terms of consistent performance of a piece of network equipment or a pats 
from A to B.

Cheers, Chris.
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