
A tube map of the Internet - omh
http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=internet-tube
======
yoha
Why do I need Javascript to display a simple image? Here is the direct link:

[http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/Int...](http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/InternetTube.png)

~~~
blueskin_
Thank you for the sanity.

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davb
OT: This is the first time I've noticed a website hijack the Page Up/Down keys
to navigate between articles. This is stupid. I can't imagine anyone equating
Page Down (the universal key for "scroll down a view") to "Next Article".

It's almost as annoying as "swipe left/right to navigate between articles".
I'm never going to want to do that. I'll rarely click a next article link. But
with the swipe/tap to navigate thing, I'm terrified to touch my screen in case
the site I'm on behaves in some non-standard, ridiculous way.

~~~
pjc50
I strongly agree; it's a nasty antifeature. It might be tolerable if there was
no vertical scrollbar and the page loaded immediately, but there is and it
doesn't.

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stephencanon
If we're being honest, [almost?] every developed nation should have the
surveillance badge; pretending otherwise is remarkably naive.

~~~
mcintyre1994
At least Britain should also have censorship too. Maybe imprisonment too after
we jailed people for inciting riots, but that's certainly not comparable to
some others. Also it was the FBI that shut down Megaupload, should we consider
that US-sponsored censorship that just happened to affect the rest of us?

Realistically, all 3 - surveillance, censorship and imprisonment are way too
nuanced for such a simplified diagram. Trying to fit them in was probably a
mistake IMO.

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jontro
I wonder why Sweden is not listed as a surveillance country. Also the
connections to Sweden looks odd since I think there are direct cables to the
UK for instance.

See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defence_Radio_Establis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defence_Radio_Establishment_\(Sweden\)#Mass_surveillance)

~~~
kintamanimatt
Mistake? Oversight? Not being listed as one in whatever source document that
was used to create this?

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zokier
The Poland-Denmark-Norway-Iceland-Sweden region seems incorrect. Also I'm not
sure how to read Finland-Estonia-Russia or Cyprus-Israel-Turkey sections, the
map would be clearer if the splits happened only in nodes (ie countries) and
not in-between.

Overall the map seems hugely simplified wrt Europe, which I believe to be far
more interconnected. If simplification is desired then imho it would almost be
better to just bunch all of Europe as single node

~~~
nyrina
I agree, I know for a fact that Denmark has several cables going to Sweden, of
course, it's the direct link from main land Europe to Sweden and Norway

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callesgg
The original is cooler. [http://cablemap.info/](http://cablemap.info/)

~~~
dTal
I disagree. While the original is far more comprehensive and interactive, this
map is a superior visual summary for the same reason the original London tube
map was so revolutionary - it allows you to see the layout of the network
without geography getting in the way (not an obvious thing to do at the time).
I for one, despite having looked at many such cable maps, have never managed
to grasp the actual topology of the internet.

Here's a pre-schematic London tube map:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Tube_map_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Tube_map_1908-2.jpg)

~~~
TillE
> Here's a pre-schematic London tube map:

That seems...fine? It's easily readable with all the stops clearly labeled,
and you can see exactly where in London they are.

It could of course be cleaned up in a modern version, but even as-is it seems
quite useful.

~~~
ollysb
That map does seem pretty useful, it's certainly easier to figure out if it's
quicker to walk somewhere(sometimes what looks like a long route on the tube
can actually be a 10/15 min walk). Bear in mind that there's far more
information on the modern map though. There's additional tube lines (e.g.
jubilee, victoria, and the whole DLR) and it covers a far greater area of
London.

~~~
ibmthrowaway218
Tube map with walking lines:

[http://commutingexpert.com/underground-overground-
wandering-...](http://commutingexpert.com/underground-overground-wandering-
free/)

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nodesocket
Blown away! Any idea why Brazil is the 2nd largest user of Twitter and has
such a huge geo footprint? Was not expecting that, also Indonesia being 3rd is
crazy as well.

[http://i.imgur.com/ZlPSuAB.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZlPSuAB.png)

~~~
pr0d
Indonesia currently have a very big "relationship" with twitter as more people
are getting smartphones everyday.

And getting stuck in traffic would contribute to a lot of tweeting. FYI,
Indonesian more people access YouTube from phones than other countries
compared to the pc web version, at least in South East Asia.

~~~
pr0d
wait too much word. I mean compared to other countries, a bigger portion of
Indonesian people access YouTube through their phones than "traditional"
computers

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marcosscriven
Having recently moved to Sydney from London, I was shocked that it cost more
here for a 16mbit ADSL connection with a 200GB limit, than it did for an
unlimited 120mbit cable connection at home. Upload speed is horrendous.

This map makes it patently clear why!

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zokier
Hmph. I tried to draw something similar based on
[http://www.submarinecablemap.com](http://www.submarinecablemap.com) data, but
graphviz is uncooperative. Here is a gist of my dot-file if someone is
interested in trying their luck:
[https://gist.github.com/zokier/9963061](https://gist.github.com/zokier/9963061)

I made the assumption that submarine cables are bus-like topologically, ie all
nodes can communicate with all other nodes connected to that cable.

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blueskin_
A lot of missing censorship warnings there... see: USA, UK, all the middle
east, most of western Europe...

~~~
omh
The pages says that it was based the the “Enemies of the Internet” report from
Reporters Without Borders[1].

There are plenty of issues with internet freedom in the USA, UK and Western
Europe but I don't think they're on the same scale. I'm happy to criticise the
government from my UK connection[2]. Would you want to do the same from a
Chinese, Syrian or Saudi ISP?

[1] Probably [http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/](http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/)
, but the list of countries looks clearer in their 2013 report
[http://surveillance.rsf.org/en/wp-
content/uploads/sites/2/20...](http://surveillance.rsf.org/en/wp-
content/uploads/sites/2/2013/03/enemies-of-the-internet_2013.pdf) [2] David
Cameron sucks!

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Confusion
So this is an interesting visualization, but not very helpful if you want to
understand how data flows on the internet.

As an example, referring to the list of internet exchanges [1], the 1st and
2nd largest data flows on the internet (through the main German and Dutch
exchanges) now seem to happen in an isolated tube segment. This of course
implies there are a quite a few other tubes that are more important than the
tubes displayed here if you want to understand the data flows.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_poin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_points_by_size)

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kertof
I'm very surprised at some stances taken on this map. Only a handful of
countries have the censorship badge, whereas reports globally indicate
otherwise... I'm thinking of Turkey, but also South Korea, and others...

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gbog
Great. Would it be possible to add interactivity to this map.

E.g. I am now in China, checking some website hosted in France. Can it tell me
the usual routes? Could it trace route real time and show me which one was
chosen?

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Goosey
Slightly off topic, but wow there are a lot of really cool info-maps on this
page. Really enjoyed reading through [http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=the-
world-through-the-ey...](http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=the-world-
through-the-eyes-of-a-search-algorithm)

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ilovecookies
This whole slideshow was too pro US for my taste, academia everywhere seemed
too big there in comparison because all other countries where chopped up in
such small pieces. The only fair comparison was the # of top ranked school in
the world, where actual continents where being compared.

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ashmud
Which country abbreviations are these?

(Pseudo-)Edit: Looks like ISO 3166-1 alpha-3. I wonder why I don't see it
more.

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zxexz
Wow, you really wouldn't guess from looking at this map that Lithuania has
some of the best fibre infrastructure in the world, and the fastest
upload/download speeds per dollar (or litas, in this case) in the world.

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snake_plissken
I don't get the surveillance icons part. Technically every country should have
that eye thing because, so we've been told, the NSA can vacuum up every bit
out on every wire.

~~~
zhemao
It's based on whether the government of the country spies on its own domestic
network.

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dfine
This is a much better version without the inconsistent editorializing:
[http://www.submarinecablemap.com/](http://www.submarinecablemap.com/)

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ChrisArchitect
reminds of the ol' Web Trend Map [http://cloudfront4.ia.net/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/wtm4-fi...](http://cloudfront4.ia.net/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/wtm4-final.png)

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Maria1987
skeptical Israel is not watching the internet

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rezna
where the hell is Czech Republic?

~~~
yread
We will have to conquer some land with access to the sea to appear on a map of
submarine internet cables, I'm afraid ;)

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inanov
no censorship in turkey? fun!

