Roadmap of the Internet

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You've probably heard the Internet called the "Information Superhighway", but have you ever wondered what a roadmap of the Internet would look like? Hi I'm Jeanna Matthews and this is Common Sense Computing.

The "roads" in the Internet are data connections between computers. These connections can take the form of dial-up access, wireless links, Ethernet and many other networking technologies.

According to the Internet Systems Consortium, there are over 250 million computers on the Internet so a single map showing all the "roads" on the Internet would be a bit overwhelming. However in the Internet there are the equivalent of cities or groupings of computers called Autonomous Systems.

Interestingly, the roads within these Internet cities are often larger than between cities. For example, if you use a local Ethernet network at home or at work, the "bandwidth" or number of lanes on that road is likely to be many times larger than the road that links you to the rest of the Internet. So in an Internet map, the streets of your neighborhood are the equivalent of 6 lane highways while the interstate that goes between cities is more like a dirt road.

Also, things that are close by geographically may not be close by on the Internet. For example, there are few Internet roads directly between Europe and Asia. Traffic between Europe and Asia often travels through Internet roads in North America. Similarly, you could sit two computers next to one another in the same room, but have one dial-in to the Internet and the other connect through a cable modem. Although they may be inches apart physically, they would appear in the Internet at vastly different locations.

You can learn more about the "roads" that link you to the Internet with a simple tool called traceroute, available on almost all computers. I used this tool to see that my data crosses 17 Internet roads between my home and the computer www.google.com.

For information on using traceroute and links to maps of the Internet, visit us on the web at commonsensecomputing.org. For common sense computing, this is Jeanna Matthews.

Using traceroute

CAIDA's Internet Atlas Project