What would the internet look like if we could prise off the lid and peer into its innards?
Shai Carmi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and his colleagues studied data from over 5000 computers loaded with software that constantly probes the connections around it. They found that at the internet’s core lie the most heavily connected networks, run by firms such as AT&T and Google. It never takes more than one or two steps to move between points here. Outside that is the “mantle” of well-connected internet service providers, where links take three or four steps. On the…
