Field notes · 2 June 2026
Reading network peaks without drowning in charts
How to keep peak-hour traffic views readable when ops needs both the spike and the story behind it.
Peak charts fail when every interface and cell sits on one line plot. Readers cannot tell which spike mattered for capacity talk and which was a short burst already absorbed.
Separate the pack into three layers: system-wide peak for leadership, regional peaks for planning, and a short list of exceptional sites for engineering follow-up. Do not ask one chart to serve all three audiences.
Annotate the known events — festivals, stadium nights, outage recovery — directly on the visual. A labelled annotation prevents half the room from guessing aloud. Keep annotations factual; leave speculation for the discussion notes.
If your extract resolution is coarser than the meeting claims, say so. A fifteen-minute aggregate should not be presented as if it proves a two-minute congestion claim.