A project to create a comprehensive graphical representation of the internet in just one day and using only a single computer has already produced some eye-catching images.
Barrett Lyon, a networking engineer based in the US, thought he could 鈥渕ap鈥� every node on the internet in far less time than that taken by other projects. Some efforts to produce images of the internet have taken months to complete.
Lyon reckoned he could quickly provide a simple picture of all the networks linking internet nodes using a standard networking program. After a colleague challenged him to prove that he could, Lyon began his mapping project, called Opte.
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鈥淚t started as a bet, but after I warmed up to the idea I found a lot of value in the project itself,鈥� Lyon writes on the project鈥檚 homepage. He says his maps could provide a useful overview of the internet鈥檚 structure and even reveal the effects of disruptions caused by real-world disasters. But more importantly, he says: 鈥淭he project is art.鈥�
Packet hops
The project uses a networking program called 鈥渢raceroute鈥�. This records the network addresses that a data packet hops between as it travels towards a particular network host.
Lyon鈥檚 software streamlines the process by only mapping larger 鈥渃lass C鈥� networks. By performing 194 traceroute searches per second, it should be possible to scan the whole internet in a day, Lyon says.
鈥淲hat he has done is apparently to automate it, which is cool,鈥� says Steve Coast, a networking researcher at University College London. But Coast adds that the scheme is unlikely to find every interconnection.
鈥淗e apparently maps outward from one point, which means the map is incomplete since by definition you can鈥檛 see routes that don鈥檛 go to you,鈥� he says.
Lyon has developed a distributed version of the software that would use more starting points and therefore create a more comprehensive map of all the links between network addresses.
