First detailed global Internet atlas developed
Washington
Scientists
have developed the first global Internet Atlas — including a detailed map of
the internet's physical structure in India — an advance that could help guard
the infrastucture from terrorism or extreme weather events.
Despite
the internet-dependent nature of our world, a thorough understanding of the
internet's physical makeup has only recently emerged through Internet Atlas
developed by researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US and
their collaborators.
"Internet
is in a constant state of flux and mapping is really important to understand
the evolution of the Internet," Ramakrishnan Durairajan, a PhD candidate
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said.
"No
single service provider can offer an authoritative perspective on the structure
of the Internet," Durairajan said.
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.
"We
have over 1,200 maps worldwide including India. All the data are connected
using web search," said Durairajan.
"From
maps that we have in our repository I'd say we have fibre running across almost
all the states in India. However, connectivity could be improved in the
north-western and north-eastern regions," he added.
Mapping
the physical internet helps stakeholders boost performance and guard against a
number of threats, from terrorism to extreme weather events like hurricanes.
"A
lot of infrastructure is by major right-of-ways, like railroad lines,"
said Paul Barford, Professor of Computer Sciences at University of
Wisconsin-Madison in the US, meaning that an event like a train derailment
could end up disrupting internet communications.
"The
question of 'how does mapping contribute to security?' is one of our
fundamental concerns," said Ramakrishnan Durairajan, PhD candidate at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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.
"There
is a lot of infrastructure sharing happening in the Internet today," said
Durairajan. "Many service providers do this to save deployment costs by
signing leases with other service providers."
"This
infrastructure sharing leads to a problem called 'shared risk': physical
conduits shared by many service providers are at an inherently risky situation
since damage to those conduits will affect many several providers," he
said.
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.
Other
data has taken more legwork to uncover, such as combing through mundane items
like local permits for laying cables, researchers said.
The
team is looking to enhance the maps even further and share their work so it can
be deployed by others to boost network performance and security. — PTI
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @
Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
Upcoming
Event | MANLIBNET 17th
Annual International Conference on 15-16 September 2017 at Jaipuria, Noida,
India
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