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What does the Internet look like?

A long time ago, Tim Bernes-Lee developed a way computers could communicate with each other. It became the Internet. For many of us the way cyber-communications work is still a mystery. In an effort to understand the nature or the Internet, many people have tried to map-out or represent graphically the "network of networks."

By BCBusiness /

What does the Internet look like?

A long time ago, Tim Bernes-Lee developed a way computers could communicate with each other. It became the Internet. For many of us the way cyber-communications work is still a mystery. In an effort to understand the nature or the Internet, many people have tried to map-out or represent graphically the “network of networks.”

According to the Atlas of Cyberspace by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, the maps or representations can be of many categories: artistic (The Matrix), geographical, conceptual and topological among others. The latter are created using a combination of special software, math, and imagination.

Below, we are featuring some of what you could find at the Atlas of Cyberspace. Click on the maps to learn more about the method of creation and the people who are behind them.

CONCEPTUAL MAPS

Tim Bernes-Lee 1989 presented the following map as a visual representation of the Informational Management Proposal to CERN: “This document was an attempt to persuade CERN management that a global hypertext system was in CERN’s interests. Note that the only name I had for it at this time was “Mesh” — I decided on “World Wide Web” when writing the code in 1990.”


[pagebreak] John December, Internet consultant and author of The World Wide Web Unleashed, created the following map in 1994. The map tries to represent the cyberspace as geographical places contained in a limited universe, and it gives us a good idea on the efforts made in order to understand the nature of this new medium of communication. To learn more about John December’s work go to www.december.com/cyberatlas



[pagebreak] TOPOLOGY MAPS According to Wikipedia, “topology involves the study of properties that describe how a space is assembled, such as connectedness and orientability”. Internet topology maps are made using databases and special software to trace and represent the connections among servers.

The following map was created by the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis Project (CAIDA), which mission is to investigates the practical and theoretical aspects of the Internet. The map “represents a macroscopic snapshot of the Internet for two weeks: 1-17 January 2008. The graph reflects 4,853,991 observed IPv4 addresses and 5,682,419 IP links (immediately adjacent addresses in a traceroute-like path) of topology data gathered from 13 monitors probing 48,535,339 /24s spread across 235,286 (49.3% were reached) globally routable network prefixes (94.9% of the total prefixes seen in RouteViews on 1 January 2008).” Click on the image to see it bigger:



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CAIDA Project – 3D hyperbolic map created using Walrus software

[pagebreak] Stephen Coast 2001 – IP Mapping Project As a response of a Bill Cheswick paper, Stephen created the following graphics. He explain his method as folllows: “Parse traceroutes from us and public traceroute servers to random ips and dump individual hops in a database (MySQL) with Java and JDBC. Give each node a point in space and attach it with springs to its linked nodes. Give them all a repulsive electric charge, set simulation in motion. Dump data into a table, then output some povray files and render. Also do some pretty stats and 2-d layout with mathematica.” For more maps and further explanation, click on the image:


Stephen Coast 2001 – Mapping animation



[pagebreak] The Opte Project is another mapping project that seeks to make an accurate representation of the extent of the Internet using visual graphics.


Opte Project 2 – Detail



[pagebreak] Map created using data from the DIMES Project in 2005. “DIMES is a distributed scientific research project, aimed to study the structure and topology of the Internet, with the help of a volunteer community”. The map was done using LargeNetworks visualization tool: “Colors are assigned according to the coreness: vertices with coreness 1 are violet, and the maximum coreness vertices are red, following the rainbow color scale. The node degree scale is also displayed, showing the maximum degree of the network.”

For more maps and information for participating go to www.netdimes.org or visit LargeNetworks website


Chris Harrison created the following map using DIMES data, his map “displays how cities across the globe are interconnected […] These visualizations use a cylindrical equidistant projection. Point latitudes and longitudes were rounded to the nearest whole number and used in a flat coordinate system. This means that the planetary surface area represented by each point varies, skewing density data (both point and edge)!”


[pagebreak] Topological Map representing Wikipedia at the center of the World Wide Web. The graph was created using TouchGraph



[pagebreak] Finally, why not create an artistic map of your own website? The graph was created using an applet at Webpages as graphs The graph is based on BCBusiness HTML coding: blue: for links (the A tag) red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags) green: for the DIV tag violet: for images (the IMG tag) yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags) orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags) black: the HTML tag, the root node gray: all other tags