CIO.com just published a swank new detail map of the North American Internet backbone — 134,855 routers are represented, each color-coded to indicate which provider 0wns it. Information Aesthetics blog explains:
Red is Verizon, blue AT&T, yellow Qwest, green is other backbone players like Level 3 & Sprint Nextel, black is the entire cable industry put togethe, & gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S.
Link to PDF (1.1MB) , and link to related post on CIO.com blog.
On his blog, USC Annenberg Center for Communications scholar Kazys Varnelis adds,
CIO Senior Writer Ben Worthen, who produced the map with Bill Cheswick of Lumeta suggests that what it tells us is that the debate on net neutrality needs to be understood not only in terms of the last mile, but also in terms of the backbone. The players are increasingly the same.
(Thanks, Dan Lurie and Kazys Varnelis!)
