Mapping the Internet

The Opte Project is (was?) an effort to produce a full, real map of the Internet, using graphing and some basic colours, and grabbing every IP registration out there, linking them up. It produces a pretty little visual, and if you go back up to the website, you can even find a nice viewer for zooming in and out of the map. Click to enlarge.



I love attempts like this to bring the internet truly onto the physical plane - because it really is like a limitless set of geography, with areas of great beauty, massive hubs of entertainment, run-down smutty alleyways and a massively mixed culture.

I've bought a couple of the XKCD comics to go on my walls that also map the internet, they're less pretty but still infinitely fascinating. The first is similar to the above, a mapping of the IP address space:


_{XKCD 195}

The second is a fictional map of all of the online communities. The store version has a bunch of fun stuff on it that's not in the picture below, but it's still great - although, with the ever changing nature of the internet, already dated, with the massive growth of Facebook.


_{XKCD 256}