Many people have tried to map the Internet – a daunting task, to say the least. In theory, a little more than 4 billion computers can be connected to the Internet (a limit we are fast approaching for a variety of reasons, by the way), so as you can imagine, this isn’t exactly the simplest activity to do. In the past, nobody’s had a very good idea of how many computers are actually online, because there’s no central authority computers need to report to.

Enter the Opte Project. The site has completed one of the rare (if only) maps of every class C network on the Internet (in other words, a good chunk of it). Most impressively, the entire map is built via a variety of open-source packages – including at least three packages in LAMP – Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Perhaps the most impressive statistic of all is the time it takes, from start to finish, to render a map – 268 hours, or 11 days. This could be even faster if they decide to do mapping via a cluster or grid.

I briefly spoke to Barrett Lyon, the leader of the project, via IRC.

Waileia: What are the points [on the map]?
Barrett Lyon: Every point is a computer or a network device, or something with an IP…There are over 13 million of them, [and] inside each, 256 IPs that could be live or not…If we were to draw them on the map, it would make a mess. 🙂
W: So, the edges could represent things like NAT boxes, internal LANs, and so forth?
BL: Yes, and the connected dots [and] lines are all routers.

While it’s been taken offline due, in part, to the slashdotting, there’s also a page where you can find yourself on the map.

Original link via Slashdot. Image used with permission of the Opte Project.

Here’s a collection of some things on the Internet, taken for granted, that have had an incredible impact on ‘net culture:

• The Original new.gif: At least as recognizable as Yahoo’s version.
• On the subject of Yahoo!, here’s the search engine’s first home.
• The First Smiley 🙂: September 19^th, 1982.
• RFC 2555: RFCs are the standards responsible for the formation of the Internet. Don’t worry, this one isn’t too techy. It commemorated 30 years since RFC 1. (Yes, that’s 1969. And you thought the Internet was one of those new-fangled toys for geeks.)

It’s a kind of creepy proposition, and for a Christian, one with profound [and eternal] implications that need to be taken seriously. Is the Internet displacing our worship? The question merits attention.

In the words of Alan Cohen, the Vice President of an emerging Wi-Fi hotspot provider:

If I can operate Google, I can find anything. And with wireless, it means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too.

Read the full article by New York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman here.

For a few years (an eternity in Internet time), a telecom company called Tellme hosted a free service called Extensions. By calling 1-800-555-TELL, you could access one of thousands of voice sites published by people. Anybody who was willing to learn VoiceXML could set up one of these voice services. They recognized the caller’s speech without training, and could read information using either a pre-recorded voice or TTS.

Alas, Extensions are no more. Although both 1-800-555-TELL and Tellme Studio still exist, there’s no way for the average developer to publicize their work. This has resulted in a lot of useful hotlines, games, and even audio blogs shutting down.

Tellme doesn’t disclose the magic numbers of call volume and service fees that would allow these people to publish again, but rumor has it that the company doesn’t respond to inquiries that estimate less than one million^* calls per month. That excludes your humble blogger.

Rest in peace, Tellme Extensions. I’m hoping some web hosting provider takes over for you and offers VoiceXML hosting for the masses at affordable prices – there’s a void that needs to be filled.

^* LINK TENDING 1/11 – Removed dead link.