Most of us only notice the Internet when it breaks. But under the hood, thousands of routers are constantly negotiating paths to keep things running.

I wanted to visualize this chaos, so I built a live map of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). I even included a "BGP Anomalies" dashboard, which has essentially become a real-time networking wall of shame. Just cross your fingers you don't see your own AS number sitting at the top of the list!

To handle the sheer volume of data (BGP updates can easily peak at over 30,000 events per second), I built a centralized engine in Go and used Ebitengine for hardware-accelerated 2D rendering. The backend processes the raw RIPE RIS stream, classifies the events into four severity tiers, and broadcasts a smooth 30 FPS render 24/7 to YouTube.

This map highlights exactly what the network is doing:
🔴 Route leaks and outages
🟠 Volatile links and BGP "babbling"
🟣 Routers "hunting" for backup paths
🔵 Routine network discovery

It has been incredibly rewarding to turn raw routing data into a relaxing, lofi experience. You can actually watch the Internet heal itself in real time when a connection drops.

Check out the live map: http://livemap.kmcd.dev
Read the full technical breakdown: https://kmcd.dev/posts/live-internet-map/