The network viewer lets you see routers in the Tor network and where your traffic is going.
When you want to communicate anonymously through Tor (say, connecting to a website), Tor creates a tunnel, or circuit, of encrypted connections through a series of routers on the network. Your application's traffic is then sent as a stream through that circuit. For efficiency, multiple streams may share the same circuit.
The network map consists of a map of the world, with red pinpoints indicating the geographic location of routers in the Tor network. Green lines are drawn between routers to indicate the path of circuits that your Tor client has created through the Tor network.
You can zoom in on locations in the map by clicking the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons in the toolbar. You can also scroll around on the map by clicking on the map and then dragging it in whatever direction you would like to move the map.
The geographic location of a Tor router is determined by looking up the IP address of the router in a GeoIP database, created by MaxMind and located at geoip.vidalia-project.net.
In the middle of the dialog, below the network map, you will see a list of your current circuits, as well as any application traffic currently on those circuits. When the network map first loads, you will probably see a connection to geoip.vidalia-project.net, which occurs when Vidalia is looking up geographic information for the list of Tor routers. It is important to note that this request is done through Tor, so your location is not revealed to the GeoIP server.
On the left side of the network view, you will see a list of routers in the Tor network. Next to each router is an icon indicating that router's status. The following table summarizes the possible router status icons:
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The router is offline or simply not responding. |
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The router is hibernating, meaning it is online, but has used up as much bandwidth as the operator is willing to allow for a given time period. |
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The router is online, but has shown only minimal throughput. |
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The router is online and has shown a throughput >= 20 KB/s. |
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The router is online and has shown a throughput >= 60 KB/s. |
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The router is online and has shown a throughput >= 400 KB/s. |
All bandwidth values are estimates based on the minimum of either the maximum bandwidth sustained input or output over any ten second period in the past day.
The router details panel at the right side of the screen gives you details about the router or routers currently selected in the router list. If you have selected a circuit or stream in the list of your current circuits and streams, this panel will show you details about each router through which your traffic is currently being relayed.
The fields that you may see in the panel are as follows (Note: not all of these fields will always be present):
| Location | The geographic location of this Tor router. |
| IP Address | IP address at which this Tor router can be reached. |
| Platform | Operating system information and Tor version on which this router is currently running. |
| Bandwidth | Estimated maximum amount of bandwidth that the directory servers have seen this router handle recently. |
| Uptime | Length of time this router has been available, which can be used to help estimate this router's stability. |
| Last Updated | Date this router's information was last updated. |