A New Map of the Internet

An anonymous reader writes "The Chris Harrison project has created a series of maps that show the geographical structure and distribution of the Internet. At the site you can view a global, geo-spatial map of the global internet. The visualizations were put together using data from the Dimes project. One visualization shows the density of Internet connections worldwide while the other displays how international cities are connected. Detailed Maps of Europe and North America are included as well. It's amazing how skewed the distribution is — beyond Australia, New Zealand, and parts of South-East Asia, the southern hemisphere has only a peppering of connectivity."

Comments

Shocking

[kmac06]

So the parts of the world that are developed and wealthy have a larger internet presence than the third world countries? I am shocked, shocked I say.

Why such a map doesn't mean much

[ajs]

I've worked on trying to identify geographical locations based on IP, reverse mapping, and a number of other measures. Trust me when I say that it's near impossible to get even a passable degree of accuracy. DIMES does the best they can with what they have, but I would not put too much stock in it.

Re:Why such a map doesn't mean much

[Alomex]

Trust me when I say that it's near impossible to get even a passable degree of accuracy.

This is assuming you try to ID the location from a single place. If you probe the IP from ten different geographic locations you can get within 100 miles of the actual destination and quite often a lot closer than that. Quite often the address we guessed was within 10 miles of that listed in the DNS records (which is not always the right one due to corporations collocating their servers at a different address than the DNS record).

Re:Why such a map doesn't mean much

[spectrokid]

Well somebody is getting it right... I am living in a shitty little village in Denmark and and the "Meet interesting girls in..." adverts from Adult Friend Finder have zeroed in. A year ago they gave towns 60 km away from here, now they are always within 10 km.

prior art

[arbitraryaardvark]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGfNSA3QmWg&NR=1
http://xkcd.com/store/

Kinda looks like this

[lecithin]

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/image/earth_night.jpg

Map of Tubes

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Map of Tubes

Hello, Ted Stevens here.
I find this map of tubes very intriguing. As you may know, I have been a proponent of protecting the Internet's tubes from clogging up. I think this new geo-spatial map will show how the tubes are distributed. It shows that I was right all along! The Internet is like a truck! You can't just throw stuff on it or it slows it down. As a matter of fact, my secretary is sending an Internet right now and NO CARRIER

Very Truly Yours,
Ted Stevens
U.S. Senator
--
Write in the man! George W. Bush in 2008.

Obligatory

[evanbd]

http://xkcd.com/195/

http://xkcd.com/256/

not 100% right.

[hjf]

this map needs a lot of interpretation: the southern hemisphere looks dark compared to the north, but that's because of the way population is distributed. In the US, there's town after town, and that's why mid-to-north US looks so bright, and we know that in the left, it isn't so. Europe is the same. Lots of people crammed in relatively small territories. But then you see Brazil and Argentina, and we look dim. Too dim. Well, that's because we have vast extensions of nothing. Wild rainforest, the wonderful pampas... sure, these places are "disconnected". But then again, nobody lives there (keep in mind, for example, Argentina is 2/3 the size of the US and 1/10 the population). But look closely: central america is bright. Why? Easy: small countries, many cities together. They look brighter in the map. I mean, south america isn't "disconnected", it's just not so densely connected, and I guess there's an important factor too:

This map was, I guess, made with some sort of "geolocation" database. I happen to be a customer of a large ISP, they don't assign a whole netblock to my city, so it's registered as part of Buenos Aires . So the data may lie a little (I know that hundreds, if not thousands of Latin American small towns have -paid- wi-fi. Some of them through satellite links, others, the luckier, through leased lines. I happen to be in the industry and have set up 4 wi-fi ISPs, and I know of at least another 10 in my province alone). I think the "world at night" ( http://www.atimes.com/atimes/images/earth_night.jpg ) map represents what I'm trying to mean. I bet that if the data was completely precise, it would look a lot like this map.

Mirror link

[Anonymous Coward]

I have mirrored the maps temporarily at http://www.clearchaos.com/worldBlack.jpg and http://www.clearchaos.com/worlddotblack.jpg at least until my server turns into a smoking ruin.

Not so shocking...

[NerveGas]

"beyond Australia, New Zealand, and parts of South-East Asia, the southern hemisphere has only a peppering of connectivity."

That's because beyond those countries, the Southern hemisphere only has a peppering of prosperity. If you want to know why, read "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations".

Is it classified like Sean Gorman map yet?

[AHuxley]

Sean Gorman mapped out the US fiber-optic telco fiefdoms.
Parts of his dissertation where "removed".
He showed the choke points and critical links.

Re:It is already out of date...

[mastershake_phd]

mirror, full article + pics: http://freedomsforums.com/viewtopic,p,1385.html

useless map

[marafa]

in my opinion, this map is useless UNLESS it is overlaying a map of the world. i for one, cannot find the capital city, cairo, of my country, egypt in these maps, only vaguely, but then again, it could also be tel aviv