Improve color contrast and meaning through patterns

[job]

As discussed in this thread, here a proposal to increase the readability and meaning of visualisations of complex data by using patterns and contrasting colors.

The idea is to use less different color hues, but add more depth to the visualisation by using patterns and descriptive letters. I think this will benefit both colorblind/non-colorblind people. Even for people with good sight it can be a challenge to correctly associate all hues with their appropriate meaning.

In this beautifully mspaint editted mockup I've done the following:

• paths that leave the country and circle back (which most of us will consider less-optimal routing) are brownish
• paths that stay within the country are color green (these could traverse private peering, public peering or a transit connection)
• paths for which we know that they cross an IXP (based on the IPs in the traceroute matching a register peering lan prefix from PeeringDB) are decorated with stripes and have the letters "IX" in them.

[emileaben]

we implemented colors, didn't do the IX pattern. for that i'd need more help on the visuals