Scientists have developed the first global Internet Atlas, including a detailed map of the Internet’s physical structure in India.
This Internet Atlas is developed by researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S.
While average users rarely think of these elements, things like submarine cables — buried below the ocean floor — run between continents to enable communication. Data centres in buildings all over the world are packed with servers storing many types of data.
Traffic exchange occurs between different service providers at internet exchange points. Though these and other elements may be out of sight for the average user, they are crucial pieces of the physical infrastructure that billions of people rely on.
The project has helped direct attention to the problem of shared risk. Physical infrastructure is commonly shared by multiple networking entities, so damage to any particular piece of infrastructure can impact more than one entity.
Much of the data used to create the Internet Atlas comes from publicly available information, such as what Internet service providers publish on their websites.