Internet is good for connecting people. Good examples are people that a person posting something could live in a specific city and the editors could live across the country, and people could read it from across the world. People think the idea is simple but it isn't. Until now, scientists have had a hard time mapping the structure of the internet. The internet started almost by accident in the 1960's and the 1970's. The internet grew as other internet sites added their internet systems to the structure. Researchers have tried to understand the shape of the internet before but failed. They used to send packages of information to specific destinations. Recently scientist's were able to send probes from only a small number of sites. With limited numbers of starting points the probes stayed close to home. This has been sucha big problem that "there was a growing opinion before [the new] study that you really couldn't measure the internet" says Scott Kirkpatrick of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Kirkpatrick and his colleagues found a way. They enlisted volunteers to help them send probes from more than 12,000 computers around the world. The widespread method revealed three layers within the internet. At the core of the virtual jellyfish there are about 100 of the most tightly connected subnetworks. These include some subnetworks you've probably heard of, such as google. Because 80 percent of subnetworks can reach each other without going through the core, the new map suggests that the internet is less vulnerable than scientists previously thought. Attacks or outages to any one part of the internet probably wouldn't take the system down.
By Billy and David!
