Live Latency Map Guide: Pins, Colours, You Marker & Drawer

Quick answer: open the live map and your selected destinations appear as pins. Every few seconds (30 by default) each one is measured again, and the pin updates its number and colour. You see at a glance which servers are fast, which are slow and which have stopped answering, and you see where they are relative to you. It is continuous monitoring with a world map as the interface.

What the map is for

A Test is a snapshot. The map is a movie. Use it when you want to:

• watch whether a problem is constant or comes and goes;
• see which regions are affected when something breaks;
• leave a wall display showing connectivity to the services your team depends on;
• check how your latency changes during the day.

It uses the same selection of destinations as Test, so choosing them once is enough. See Destinations and custom hosts.

Anatomy of the map

The base map

A dark world map is drawn locally from a bundled country outline, so no external map tiles are needed and the map loads quickly.

Pins

Each destination is a pin with its latest latency in milliseconds. A coloured ring pulses when a new reading arrives, which is a subtle cue that the data is live.

The You marker

A permanent You marker shows where the app believes you are, so you can judge distance to each server. If the app cannot determine your location precisely, it still shows you at a default position so the map always has a starting point.

The top bar and controls

A compact bar offers pause and check-now controls, a status indicator and access to settings. The Map tab shows a small live dot while the engine is running.

How servers are placed on the map

1. The hostname is resolved to an IP address using a public DNS service (Google DNS over HTTPS).
2. That IP is looked up in the site geolocation database.
3. The result is cached in your browser for three days so the next visit places pins instantly.

Geolocation of an IP is an approximation. It is usually accurate to the country and often to the city for data-centre addresses, but it can be off for anycast addresses, because the same IP is announced from many places and you reach the nearest one. See CDNs and anycast.

When a hostname cannot be located at all, the pin is placed in a small scatter around your own marker rather than in the middle of the ocean. That is a visual convenience; it says nothing about where the server really is. When several pins would overlap, they fan out so each stays clickable.

Understanding pin colours

In live modes the colour is relative to the same destination's own recent history, not to the world average. A destination needs at least three earlier readings before it can be judged. Then:

• Green: normal for this destination.
• Yellow: more than 40% above its recent average (adjustable from 10% to 100%).
• Red: more than 70% above (adjustable from 20% to 200%).
• No reply: the request timed out (5 seconds by default).

A rise smaller than 30 ms is never flagged, so tiny wobbles on a fast connection stay calm. The reasoning: in live monitoring you care when something changes from normal. The world comparison belongs to Test mode; see The world comparison explained.

The detail drawer

Click a pin to open a drawer with:

• the current state and latest reading;
• average, fastest and slowest of the stored readings (up to 60);
• 95th percentile and the percentage of no replies;
• a chart of recent readings;
• an own alert limit for this destination only, which overrides the global threshold.

The 95th percentile is calculated with the nearest-rank method over the readings stored for that destination. For how to read it, see percentiles explained.

Settings you can change

Setting	Default	Range
Check interval	30 s	5 to 120 s
Timeout	5 s	1 to 15 s
Yellow limit	+40% over own average	10 to 100%
Red limit	+70% over own average	20 to 200%
Alerts	Optional	Down or slower than a threshold (default 2000 ms)

Faster intervals show changes sooner but generate more requests. For a large selection, 30 seconds is a good balance. Alerts are covered in Alerts and thresholds.

Worked example

You select 12 servers and leave the map open. For an hour every pin is green and shows 20 to 60 ms. Then a pin in Europe turns yellow at 95 ms against its average of 58 ms (+64%, over the 40% yellow limit and more than 30 ms above). Three readings later it turns red at 140 ms, then displays no reply. Neighbouring pins stay green. That pattern points to a problem with that one destination or its route, not with your own connection. If all pins had turned yellow together, the cause would be local: Wi-Fi, your router or your ISP.

Privacy and performance

Everything the map stores (readings, settings, cached locations) lives in your browser local storage. The map does not upload your readings. Each cycle makes one small request per destination, so a long-running tab with 30 destinations at 30 seconds sends about 60 small requests per minute, which is negligible for modern connections but worth knowing on a metered mobile plan.

Common mistakes and myths

• "Pins show where the company is." They show where your lookup resolved.
• "You marker is my exact address." It is a rough estimate from the IP.
• "Yellow means broken." It means the destination is above its normal range for you.
• Comparing pin values between different servers. Distance dominates; compare each pin with itself over time.

What to do next

If you prefer cards and graphs without the map, read the Monitor guide. To set up notifications, see Alerts and thresholds. Or open the live map now.