The network viewer lets you see relays 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 relays 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 relays in the Tor network. Green lines are drawn between relays 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 relay is determined by looking up the IP address of the relay 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 relays. It is important to note that this request is done through Tor, so your location is not revealed to the GeoIP relay. The results of the lookups will be cached locally in order to reduce load on Vidalia's GeoIP relays.
On the left side of the network view, you will see a list of relays in the Tor network. Next to each relay is an icon indicating that relay's status. The following table summarizes the possible relay status icons:
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The relay is offline or simply not responding. |
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The relay 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 relay is online, but has shown only minimal throughput. |
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The relay is online and has shown a throughput >= 20 KB/s. |
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The relay is online and has shown a throughput >= 60 KB/s. |
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The relay 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 relay details panel at the right side of the screen gives you details about the relay or relays currently selected in the relay 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 relay through which your traffic is currently being sent.
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 relay. |
| IP Address | IP address at which this Tor relay can be reached. |
| Platform | Operating system information and Tor version on which this relay is currently running. |
| Bandwidth | Estimated maximum amount of bandwidth that the directory relays have seen this relay handle recently. |
| Uptime | Length of time this relay has been available, which can be used to help estimate this relay's stability. |
| Last Updated | Date this relay's information was last updated. |