Slashdot Mirror


More Mapping of the Net

An anonymous reader wrote in to say"It turns out that famous map was not the end of it, a cybergeography alert linked to this site with lots of cool pictures and animations. Turns out they didn't measure time between hosts on the poster map, and it can be used to make cool pix!"

22 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. mirror attempt... by complex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i tried to grab at least the images linked to directly on the front page, in the hope that i could mirror them, or at least pass them on to someone else to mirror them. this was when the article had only 4 responses (all -1, of course).

    the site was already toast. i got half of one image.

    wouldn't it be cool if slashdot could choose 5 or 10 trusted people (slashdot users who had previously performed a good public service and mirrored old articles) to get the story 5-8 minutes early?

    complex

    1. Re:mirror attempt... by Crusty+Oldman · · Score: 2, Funny

      Maybe we ahould ask the NSA if they have a copy?

    2. Re:mirror attempt... by Jac_no_k · · Score: 4, Informative
  2. Mirror by imgaming.com · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have two of the files mirrored on my server right now.
    Someone mind helping? I dont think it will handle a heavy /. for too long :)

    con.jpg
    VRML1.jpg

  3. Personal Experience with these maps by bentini · · Score: 5, Informative
    The site is down, so pardon me if I'm thinking of the wrong thing. But if these are the same as the famous internet maps, they're damn cool.

    I remember when Bill Cheswick started making them. At the time, both he and my dad were at Bell Labs. He even printed two different views out for me to hang on my dorm room hall. But these have interesting research aspects in small parts. The first is mapping the internet. Damn. He has daily logs going way back, and on his website has videos of the IP's of Bosnia blinking on and off during the days of bombing them. (Google search for him). It's incredible.

    But the visualization has interesting problems. My dad did some interesting work on the computational geometry structure that allowed for these things to be visualized. They have various springiness between all the connections that eventually reach the state that's displayed. The colors can be assigned in various ways (the one I remember is that each different part of the IP address is a component of RGB). It's an amazing effort that's a lot less hype and a lot more science than we might think.

    For more info, the book Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley has mention of it (my copy is packed away, otherwise I would cite it), if obscure. But if you want to do cool stuff like this, it's important to remember that it's not just scripts, cs theory can help everywhere! A useful lesson to take to heart.

    -Dan

    1. Re:Personal Experience with these maps by Alien54 · · Score: 2
      Of course, there are an almost infinite number of ways to visualize the internet.

      It is interesting to see how people handle the various dimensions.

      Map making is a long and honored geek advocation, going all the way back to ancient times.

      - - -
      Radio Free Nation
      an alternate news site using Slash Code
      "If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
      - - -

      --
      "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  4. The Map by Phoex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From what I've seen of the map (I love previews on Think Geek) it almost looks like a fractal pattern, very organic at the very least, does anyone know if that was purposeful or just another odd facet of the Internet?

    --
    00110100 00110010
    1. Re:The Map by hburch · · Score: 5, Informative

      As the writer of the layout code, I can tell you it was certainly not a design goal. The original goal was just to be able to look at the results of the traceroutes that were being collected.

      Via a variety of bugs in the layout code over the years, I've produced interesting images, such as rings, clovers, and (my favorite) hearts. However, they almost always have a fractal feel at the micro-level. This is true for almost any Eades-like layout that I've seen, so it's probably a function of the layout algorithm.

      Interestingly enough, corporate networks layout much differently that the Internet. Corporate networks tend to be very clean, while the Internet is very stringy (almost looks like the strands within some fiberglass).

    2. Re:The Map by flufffy · · Score: 4, Interesting
      considering that the internet can be seen as a complex system (in the sense of complexity theory) it would not be surprising if maps of it did not also exhibit some fractal structure.

      for some interesting stuff on complex internet structure, see xerox parc's 'internet ecologies' area at http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/groups/iea/.

  5. What it really needs though... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...is a big arrow labelled

    "YOU ARE HERE"

    1. Re:What it really needs though... by Sir_Real · · Score: 2

      I know this was a joke... But damn that would be cool... Just like on those internet sites where you can see an arial of the street you live on... It would be cool to be able to see the representation of say, your subnet...

      Andrew

  6. linkmapping by huphtur · · Score: 2, Informative

    Check out this page: http://milov.nl/linkthispage.php
    A Dutch doo (milov.nl) wrote a cool little linkmapping device. In his words: "Using a combination of PHP and Javascript-DOM-scripting, the structure on this page will grow in different directions depending on the number of referrers that link to it."

  7. They need to edit the map already, by Soko · · Score: 2

    since thier server was just slashdotted _off_ of the very same map. Heh.

    <troll>
    And all you mirror hounds - back off. Some day these idiots will learn that you don't post something on the net that the /. crowd will think is cool unless you have access to via a T3.
    </troll> ;-)

    --
    "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
  8. broken videos by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can anybody out there convert the corrupted MPEG videos to a working format? They claim to be MPEG, but are not valid MPEG files.

    1. Re:broken videos by Sir_Real · · Score: 2

      The are not corrupt. mpeg_encode (the software from Berkeley he used to encode these doesn't output mpegs the way MSMP likes). He suggests XAnim for Linux. There are other Windows alternatives listed at davecentral that you might want to look into.

      Andrew

  9. Site isn't actually down by fractalus · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's just the pipe out to the net is clogged, the CPU is 91% idle right now. I'm sorry it's not the world's fattest pipe, but it does handle normal traffic without problems. Bandwidth costs money, y'know? Keep trying and your requests may squeak through.

    Anyone who wants to mirror the entire page, with the embedded graphics, is welcome to, to make the material more accessible. Steve updates this page from time to time, so don't expect your mirror to stay current forever.

    --
    People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
  10. A mostly complete mirror? by helixblue · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's been a great week to test my read-ahead public web caching (not without it's bugs).. it automagically grabbed the site for me luckilly, though it took a loooong time. I'm not sure if this is still needed, but try My mirror of fractalus on 12sep2001

    Has most of the images on it. Be warned, this poor box is already pseudo-slashdotted due to some other mirrored content at the moment, and my poor cable modem can't handle too much more pounding (I set Roxen to throttle at 40K/s outgoing).

    So, please mirror it -- but ONLY if you post the URL to the mirror here. It's still grabbing some of the images, so be patient.

  11. traceroute by austad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If someone could take the data that they used to make the still images, and made a traceroute utility that flew down each wire "quake-style" towards each network cloud, that would be cool.

    Totally useless, but cool.

    --
    Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
  12. ARPANET map circa 1986 by SimHacker · · Score: 4, Informative
    The net was a lot simpler to map in 1986:

    http://catalog.com/hopkins/arpanet/index-large.htm l

    This is the network of IMPs (Interface Message Processors) that comprised the ARPANET in 1986.

    -Don

    --
    Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
  13. partial mirror by mosch · · Score: 2

    http://overtone.org/sass/fractalus.com/steve/stuff /ipmap/ contains as much of a mirror as I was able to get. Unfortunately the original site got turned into a 404 zone while I was still wget'ing.

    1. Re:partial mirror by mosch · · Score: 2

      I lied, the above is now a complete mirror.