The IPinfo community really liked our IPinfo Notecard a lot, but do you know the story behind the colorful spider web? This fantastic visualization was created by Maxime Mouchet (@Max), our data engineer and computer scientist.
source: Did y'all get your IP hunt prizes? - #19 by RooRay
The GitHub repo behind the visualization
maxmouchet/maxmouchet (github.com)
The context from Max
- This is a visualization of 3.7M links between 1.1M router interfaces seen in an Internet-wide traceroute scan.
- It is exhaustive in the sense that all IPv4 networks were scanned.
- All measurements were performed from a single vantage point in Paris in July 2021.
- The graph layout is computed using the Large Graph Layout algorithm, originally designed to visualize large biological networks.
- The algorithm was used by Aaron Swartz to visualize the blogosphere: What Does Blogspace Look Like? (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)
- And most famously by Barret Lyon of The Opte Project to visualize links between routers and autonomous systems.
- His images were exhibited at the MoMA in 2008: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/110263
- In comparison with the latest images from The Opte Project, which uses BGP data, this image is built from multi path traceroutes:
- It shows the network topology inside an AS, but also includes load-balanced links (when a router has multiple egress interfaces)
- The color of a link is the RIR (Regional Internet Registry) of the source IP:
- Cyan is AFRINIC (Africa)
- Orange is APNIC (Asia Pacific)
- Blue is ARIN (North America)
- Pink is LACNIC (South America)
- Green is RIPE NCC (Europe / Middle East)
- The “stars” or “suns” are ISPs (i.e. a lot of IPs after a single router)
- The blue tree on the bottom-right is Google
- Image of Google alone:
Max gave a talk about making this visualization here:
“Towards an interactive visualization of the Internet” by Maxime Mouchet (Sorbonne) - YouTube
