Map of the Internet in 3D
Ever wonder what the internet looks like from a bird’s eye view? I’m not talking about web sites but rather how networks are connected all over the earth. Below is a picture I found at the Pop Sci Blog that shows a 3D map containing nodes, the larger the node the closer to the center of the map it is. Nodes, in this case, from smallest on the outer edges to largest in the center, are actually organizations such as your local internet service provider, AT&T, Google or anything that controls some kind of network that data travels through on the internet. The map sprawls out like a tree from center to it’s outer edges, connected vertically.
The article mentions how inefficient it is to have data travel through these large bottle necks at the center of the map, because if you start at one edge of the map you must travel through the middle to get to the other side. There is no going around the edges of the map: sort of like when you send an email using Google’s Gmail service, it must travel through the center to get to it’s destination address.
I wonder what a future map of the internet will look like, say in 10, 30 or 50 years? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to travel through the center just to get where you are going?
