So I was just talking with Daniel, well more at him than with, about a customer who came in asking to check email, then sat at the computer and launched Google Earth. Fair enough, each to their own (think she eventually got to her email), when an idea dawned on me, it’d be pretty cool if you could track where your email came from, maybe even follow it on it’s journey. It would have no practical uses other than amusing you once or twice, or even to see how routing works.

But thinking about this another idea pops out. How about plotting all the major hubs that are used for data transfer and see how efficient the Internet actually is. Would it be possible to map the Internet? Honestly I can see no other purpose for this other than satisfying my curiosity. It’s just an idea, maybe even an end of course project for college. We’ll see, more research is needed.

A little searching around for Internet Mapping Project, I came across some old projects, but they’re in excess of 4/5 years old. So this may be something newish and fun to do if it hasn’t already been done to death.