Israeli University Team Produces Detailed Map of the Internet
- By Paul McCloskey
- 06/26/07
A team of Israeli university researchers has finished a project to map
the structure of the Internet, which involved some 5,000 volunteers,
who downloaded software to help identify Internet nodes and connections
between them.
The study, by Bar-Ilan University physicist Shai Carmi, concluded that
peer to peer network routing could benefit the Internet by improving
efficiency and avoiding congestion, according to a report in the MIT
Technology Review. The researchers also found that the Internet
comprises about 80 key intersection points, or nodes, in the midst of
about 5,000 intermittently linked dependent nodes.
The outer and central nodes are separated by about 15,000
self-sufficient, peer-connected nodes. Without the core nodes, about 30
percent of the outer nodes are completely isolated, the researchers
found. Yet the middle regional has enough peer-connections to keep
about 70 percent of the outer nodes online.
Carmi thinks these alternate routes should be exploited to prevent the
core nodes from becoming congested, which could significantly boost
Internet efficiency.
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About the Author
Paul McCloskey is contributing editor of Syllabus.