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Full Net Census Takes a Hint From xkcd

netbuzz writes "The University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute says it's the first full census of the 'visible Internet' since David Smallberg canvassed a piddling 315 allocated addresses in 1982. They're talking about 3 billion pings directed toward 2.8 million addresses over the course of 62 days. Oh, and they credit the comic strip xkcd for sparking the idea of presenting the data using a Hilbert curve." The main page for the census project has links to versions of the census at various scales.

52 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. first census by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    here I am. continue counting...

    1. Re:first census by ubrgeek · · Score: 2, Funny

      For some reason I'm reminded of the M*A*S*H episode, "Five O'clock Charlie" -

      Radar: Are you One?

      Hawkeye immediately throws his hand on his hip and with a touch of foppishness replies:

      Hawkeye: Yes, are you?

      --
      Bark less. Wag more.
  2. Yay, we really are Digg. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    xkcd on the front page...

    1. Re:Yay, we really are Digg. by hansamurai · · Score: 5, Funny

      http://xkcd.com/301/

      and Slashdot in the comic.

      A delicious cycle.

    2. Re:Yay, we really are Digg. by Plaid+Phantom · · Score: 5, Funny

      But the awesome comic was what effected the cool map.

      --
      All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
    3. Re:Yay, we really are Digg. by pv2b · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As a part-time grammar nazi and xkcd reader, I'm not falling for that one. ;-)

  3. Really useful for the colorblind by farker+haiku · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone got a colorblind friendly version of the map?
    FTA:
    Responses: positive: green, negative: red, mix: yellow.

    seriously guys, wtf.

    --
    Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
    1. Re:Really useful for the colorblind by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 4, Funny
      I'm still waiting for the braile version.

      Seriously guys, wtf.

    2. Re:Really useful for the colorblind by Matthew+Bafford · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm still waiting for the braile version.

      Seriously guys, wtf.


      The main difference being, of course, that designing visual medium so that it supports both color-blind and normal visioned people equally well is extremely easy. Designing visual media that supports blind people is extremely difficult. There's no excuse, other than ignorance (which is the real reason in most cases), for not supporting color-blind people.
    3. Re:Really useful for the colorblind by mcmonkey · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm waiting for the version for the deaf.

      WHAT??

    4. Re:Really useful for the colorblind by Guysmiley777 · · Score: 2, Funny

      The ANT Lab doesn't care about color(blind) people.

      --
      Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
    5. Re:Really useful for the colorblind by UbuntuDupe · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Right, but the transformation itself should be pretty simple, right? Just a rotation/inversion/dilation of the color wheel.

      And since Firefox has a really easy process for writing plugins...

    6. Re:Really useful for the colorblind by Matthew+Bafford · · Score: 2, Funny

      What about simply not caring? Isn't that an excuse?
      Sure it is; excuses are really quite easy to generate. Reasonable excuses are a little harder to come by, though.
  4. See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by saibot834 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Randall Munroe (xkcd author) also made this comic entitled "Online Communities". Also a nice way to make a map of the internet. (Extra points for those, who find "Stallman's Airship")

    1. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by Kandenshi · · Score: 2, Informative

      For the lazy it's just to the "southwest" of the IRC isles, southeast of wikipedia. Easier to see in the blown up version of the strip here

    2. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by SighKoPath · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's a bit out of date, facebook expanded a lot. Myspace shrank and wheres slashdot.
      On the Viral Straits and Bay of Trolls, between Reddit and Soviet Russia.
    3. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by godscent · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's a bit out of date, facebook expanded a lot. Myspace shrank and wheres slashdot.

      In the Ocean of Subculture, south of Digg, bordering Reddit and Soviet Russia, is "/."
    4. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by gerbalblaste · · Score: 5, Informative

      nope thats not slashdot. slashdot is labled /. and is bordered by reddit and soviet russia on the viral straights.

      The isle of slash is something very different from slashdot, mostly involving harry potter...

    5. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by Kandenshi · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can find out (more than you wanted) what the deal with slash here

      Hint: It has something to do with codes like Kirk/Spock or Harry/Draco

    6. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by maxume · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I figure anybody who manages not to mistake the Isle of Slash for Slashdot deserves the extra points; Stallman's Airship is easy.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    7. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by mooingyak · · Score: 4, Funny

      I didn't know I didn't want to know, but thanks to the other poster who replied I am regretfully informed.

      --
      William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
    8. Re:See also xkcd comic "Online Communities" by Eq+7-2521 · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's even an xkcd about slash: http://xkcd.com/305/

      --
      At my age I find coming up with a witty signature too exhausting.
  5. Plot of the internet 9ft tall by N1ck0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't you just hate it when the internet wraps onto the ceiling. All those packets are horrible on the acoustic tiles.

    And once it gets up there you know its going to be hard to get it back down.

  6. over under? by SIIHP · · Score: 2, Funny

    So what's the over under on the percentage of porn sites?

    85%?

    --
    I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
  7. What _is_ this site coming to? by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People are doing this same thing constantly.

    Not that its not cool, but acting like it hasn't been done since 1982 is grossly incorrect.

    1. Re:What _is_ this site coming to? by CharAznable · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Those are mostly maps of Internet topology. The xkcd map is a map of address allocations. It's entirely different.

      --
      The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
  8. Well if they need it... by CaptainPatent · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd be willing to be a guinea pig for their next project

    --
    Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
    1. Re:Well if they need it... by apt142 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Knowing my luck, I'd be in the control group.

    2. Re:Well if they need it... by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'd be willing to be a guinea pig for this project

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

  9. 61% are non-replies by digitaldc · · Score: 3, Funny

    39% are pr0n

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
  10. Stand up and be counted? by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny

    They're talking about 3 billion pings directed toward 2.8 million addresses over the course of 62 days.

    I assume 90% are spambots, 5% are people trying to get Frist Psot and the remainder are legit.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  11. you forgot some by OrangeTide · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... 5% downloading porn, 10% stealing copyright material. the remainder are legit.

    sure, that might be 110%, but that just shows you how efficient the Internet is.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  12. nmap by blhack · · Score: 2, Informative

    PSH..

    nmap -sP *.*.*.* > ips.txt

    --
    NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
  13. God, STFU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm colorblind and I can see the difference in shades just fine.

    Maybe you should ask the people you're acting like you care about whether they actually need you to whine for them.

    1. Re:God, STFU by adamziegler · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even though you too are red green colorblind... it does not mean that you are seeing it the same way as the parent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Congenital_color_vision_deficiencies Besides... its fairly simple to design a website or chart that makes things easy for even those who are color blind. I too am color blind... Honestly, I can't tell if the negatives and positives are mixed together when I look at it. (Not that I am fluent in reading the chart anyway!)

    2. Re:God, STFU by pcgabe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm red-green colorblind, and I absolutely, positively, cannot tell the difference between these two colors on this map. I can see the shades, sure. I just can't see what they are shades OF.

      Maybe you should ask yourself whether you're acting like a jerk for attention.

      [It's great that YOU can read this map just fine, but that doesn't help ME. In fact, coming here and saying that there's no problem for anyone is actually detrimental. Perhaps you can keep your mild color-blindness to yourself in the future? You're not speaking for the rest of us; no one appointed you representative of Colorblindopolis.]

      --
      Don't put advice in your sig.
  14. Why has nobody commented on the Hilbert Curve? by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I knew the Hilbert curve could fill the space by replacing each segment with a copy of itself (a basic concept in fractal theory, self similarity). But I didn't know that the curve had this interesting property: Similar addresses had nearby locations in two-dimensional space. The XKCD guy is a genius.

    Anyway, here's more info on the Hilbert Curve. Enjoy.

    1. Re:Why has nobody commented on the Hilbert Curve? by dextromulous · · Score: 5, Funny

      I knew the Hilbert curve could fill the space by replacing each segment with a copy of itself (a basic concept in fractal theory, self similarity). But I didn't know that the curve had this interesting property: Similar addresses had nearby locations in two-dimensional space. The XKCD guy is a genius.

      Anyway, here's more info on the Hilbert Curve. Enjoy. News bulletin: two points that are close to each other on a line are close to each other when the line is curved.
      --
      There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
    2. Re:Why has nobody commented on the Hilbert Curve? by MenTaLguY · · Score: 3, Informative

      News bulletin: two points that are close to each other on a line are close to each other when the line is curved.

      The Hilbert curve preserves that locality better than other sorts of space-filling curves, however.

      --

      DNA just wants to be free...
  15. And in other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    XKCD's writer shows his love for /. . http://xkcd.com/301/

  16. rolling blackout by ziegast · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the mid-90's a research student in a south-east Asian country decided to do a similar experiment. They started pinging 0.0.0.0, 0.0.0.1, ...etc... When they got to 1.0.0.0 they took down BBN's network and upstream ISPs because the routers would negative-cache host routes of failed pings, thereby flushing out all the other working routes. My ISP got hosed when they got to 3.0.0.0 (Merit) since they were our customer. The attack moved up through 4.0.0.0 , then, back to 4.0.0.0 BBN, and up through other networks. On that day, the Internet suffered a rolling blackout because everyone was using Cisco routers affected by the same problem. When the source was identified and blocked, the problem stopped.

    It's better to measure who is _using_ the Internet at central resources (root DNS servers, google, time.windows.com) rather than who can respond to a ping. Back when I was young, people didn't use NAT or firewalls and everything responded to a ping. Today, millions (billions?) of people don't really have public address space, and are separated from the IPv4 Internet by one or more levels of NAT or proxy servers. Clusters of web servers are mostly virtualized behind a single address served by load balancers and/or firewalls. A "ping" census is worth less today compared to prior to the rise of NAT firewalls in the late 90's. It's still interesting, but not at all accurate.

    Aside: When ISPs and corporations are forced to pay equitably for the addresses (and routes!) they use, the IPv4 "crisis" will solve itself.

  17. colorblindness IS fairly comon by Matthew+Bafford · · Score: 3, Informative

    The main similarity being, of course, that both color blindedness and .. blindedness .. are rare enough that the designers of the image hadn't even thought of it.


    Stats vary (and you can look them up easily enough), but the general idea is that 1/12 males are color-blind to some degree. That means most groups are fairly likely to have at least one color-blind person in them. Now the severity of color-blindness as well as the affect that has varies significantly from one color-blind person the next.

    I, for example, am color-blind, but didn't find the chart to be horribly difficult to use. Different colors might have made things easier, but it doesn't bother me in this case. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered when designing. Like I said, most color problems are due to plain ignorance as to how common the problem really is. I don't blame people for not considering it, as long as they really didn't realize.
    1. Re:colorblindness IS fairly comon by kefler · · Score: 5, Funny

      as well as the affect that has varies significantly from one color-blind person the next.

      Now, I'd normally think this should be 'effect', but I wonder if you might be doing this.

    2. Re:colorblindness IS fairly comon by WeirdJohn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The frequency of colour-blindness varies with race. Amongst males of Asian descent, the incidence is as high as 30%. It's rarest for Africans, with Europeans somewhere in between. There is also variation in degree (as well as different kinds, with different colours affected). I had a friend to whom the grass was brown - he had very few green cones. Another friend had it so mildly that he only got confused with a few pastel shades. I'm somewhere in between.

      Colour-blind people have an evolutionary advantage - most forms of camouflage are ineffective. This works for natural and artificial camouflage, so I'll be a better hunter in the post apocalyptic hunter/gatherer society. In times of famine I'll provide more food for my family. Conversely, my family is much more likely to be injured due to my failure to see a big hailstorm coming.

    3. Re:colorblindness IS fairly comon by Matthew+Bafford · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The frequency of colour-blindness varies with race. Amongst males of Asian descent, the incidence is as high as 30%. It's rarest for Africans, with Europeans somewhere in between. There is also variation in degree (as well as different kinds, with different colours affected).


      Ah, I had forgotten about that. I wonder if that helps explain why so many electronics use multi-color LEDs. I imagine price is a bigger factor, though.

      I had a friend to whom the grass was brown - he had very few green cones. Another friend had it so mildly that he only got confused with a few pastel shades. I'm somewhere in between.


      Colors are pretty much always what they are unless I can't distinguish them. For the most part interactions are where the problem comes in. Colors disappear, or I can't tell two colors apart. However, given a single item I can usually name the color. The blue-purple-black scale is hard. Grays and pinks can be identical. Pastels are annoying. Green, red, and grey shirts can all three look grey to me depending on the shade.

      Still, my point is that I learned what blue looks like to me, so I call things blue. So many people ask me, "what color does this look like?" as if they expect my world to be some weird psychedelic mixture of colors. It's really more a matter of minor shifts in color than anything.

      Colour-blind people have an evolutionary advantage - most forms of camouflage are ineffective. This works for natural and artificial camouflage, so I'll be a better hunter in the post apocalyptic hunter/gatherer society. In times of famine I'll provide more food for my family. Conversely, my family is much more likely to be injured due to my failure to see a big hailstorm coming.


      I don't care how accurate that is, we obviously think alike in this respect. I shall proudly tout my post-apocalyptic Darwinian advantage to all who care to hear. Perhaps we should keep quiet about it, though - maybe they will adapt and use those colored dots for camouflage instead... The camouflage not working thing is really real, though - I remember seeing hunting catalogs where ads had pictures of a person in camouflage hiding in the woods and I could always spot them immediately.
  18. set icmp_messaging off by postbigbang · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You won't find any of my servers/boundaries responding to a ping on any address at any port for any reason. Send a TCP packet, and all of them will look at it, stroke their chins for a few microseconds, and decide whether to forward them or simply move on.

    A ping test is perhaps one of the silliest, as you cite by a more accurate observation of key SOA servers over a period of time.

    That said, I like Novell.com's bravery, as they always respond to a ping. It's how I know that my DNS infrastructure is working. It's a randomly successful find (I have no affiliation with them), rather it always works, when it works.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  19. Re:My adventures in doing a "census" by SignupRequired · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It was a low bandwidth activity. Had you told the truth to your ISP, they likely wouldn't have given a shit.

  20. Play nice, let your firewall answer all pings. by Medievalist · · Score: 3, Informative

    You won't find any of my servers/boundaries responding to a ping on any address at any port for any reason. Send a TCP packet, and all of them will look at it, stroke their chins for a few microseconds, and decide whether to forward them or simply move on. Are you sure that's all they are stroking? Just kidding. It seems a bit unnecessary to shut down your site's ability to help others test connectivity to you. You really aren't doing anything but crippling harmless diagnostics; it's very easy to make your network safe to ping.

    A ping test is perhaps one of the silliest, as you cite by a more accurate observation of key SOA servers over a period of time. But, you see, there's no single trustworthy authority that has root access to all the nameservers. Think about how DNS works, and how the hints file interacts with local and intermediate caches, and you will see that your idea is not really any more workable than a ping test. It's too impossible to co-ordinate. I cache at three levels for good solid reasons not having anything to do with "fear of a bad ping". On the other hand I assume pings are friendly and only monitor them for performance and bandwidth reasons, and I have not yet been hacked despite many years of pen tests by outside agencies we've hired.

    That said, I like Novell.com's bravery, as they always respond to a ping. It's how I know that my DNS infrastructure is working. It's a randomly successful find (I have no affiliation with them), rather it always works, when it works. Aha! You admit that your fears are impacting your ability to serve the community - in a way that you admit is valuable! This admission is the first step to great power! OK, just kidding again.

    Configure your firewalls to respond to all inward-bound pings for your entire address space. This will not consume any significant resources, and will not inform any skeery crackers of anything (in fact it's a better way to fool them than blocking ping, since they will not need to resort to stealthier scans that require more resources to detect or block). Log who pings you to the router console and leave a dumb terminal running on it, or pump it into a secure internal web page. Treat ping flooding like any other kind of packet flooding - you can't really make it impossible to DDOS you simply by blocking specific ICMP types anyway. Don't forget to implement packet source ingress and egress filtering, obviously.

    Google, yahoo, and Novell all respond to ping. It's a service they kindly provide to the rest of us, a service we should all provide to make the Internet's tubes easier to see through. You aren't going to get hurt by a ping unless you have no idea how to set up a network... in which case dropping ping packets won't save you.

    Don't make researchers have to develop new ways to punch through firewalls, let's all just use good ol' friendly, simple, and useful pings.
  21. The Internet Auditing Project of 1999 by meridian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These guys port scanned 36 million hosts connected to the Internet and published some of their findings. It makes for a very interesting read especially the bit about when their Japanese team gets hacked into during the scan after apparently annoying someone in China a little bit after scanning their subnet blocks. http://reactor-core.org/internet-audit.html

    --
    meridian at tha.net
  22. Hoarding IP addresses and blocks of Phone Numbers by Dr.Who · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Aside: When ISPs and corporations are forced to pay equitably for the addresses (and routes!) they use, the IPv4 "crisis" will solve itself.

    I used to work for a Fortune 500 company with 30 K employees that had 3 and now has 6 class B IP address ranges so that each computer could have a unique IP address. At the same time, they configured all routers to block all inbound traffic to all but a few of those addresses corresponding to servers for mail, HTML, and FTP!

    A small fee of even 1 $/month would make that hoarding go away. Perhaps the first 5 or so could be reserved at a lower rate. The same is true for companies hoarding blocks of 1000 or 100 phone numbers which is causing all of the split and overlays in the NANP.

  23. Oh no! The Total Perspective Vortex (mark 0.7) by tjwhaynes · · Score: 2, Funny

    The Total Perspective Vortex is the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected. It shows its victim the entire unimaginable infinity of the universe with a very tiny marker that says "You Are Here" which points to a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot.

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  24. Historical version by HeadlessNotAHorseman · · Score: 2, Funny
    For a historical comparison, just to show how far we have come, I have printed below an equivalent map that was generated based on 1957 data:

     


     


       


         


       


       


         


       

    --
    I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.