Map of the U. S. internet

What does the Internet look like? To some degree, this question is impossible to answer. The infrastructure of the Internet is invisible and much of the information about telecom links is proprietary. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a map of sorts and there have been numerous attempts to do so. A blog post at Information Aesthetics links to a remarkably detailed map produced by CIO magazine. Unlike most other such maps, this one carries actual names of the 134,855 routers represented. CIO Senior Writer Ben Worthen, who produced the map with Bill Cheswick of Lumeta suggests that what it tells us is that the debate on net neutrality needs to be understood not only in terms of the last mile, but also in terms of the backbone. The players are increasingly the same.

What does the Internet look like? To some degree, this question is impossible to answer. The infrastructure of the Internet is invisible and much of the information about telecom links is proprietary. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a map of sorts and there have been numerous attempts to do so. A blog post at Information Aesthetics links to a remarkably detailed map produced by CIO magazine. Unlike most other such maps, this one carries actual names of the 134,855 routers represented. CIO Senior Writer Ben Worthen, who produced the map with Bill Cheswick of Lumeta suggests that what it tells us is that the debate on net neutrality needs to be understood not only in terms of the last mile, but also in terms of the backbone. The players are increasingly the same.