clipped from www.cosmosmagazine.com

Internet is spherical with a dense core

SYDNEY: The internet is not web-shaped after all. Instead, it's more more like a globe, made up of a dense core and sparsely connected outer regions, according to a mathematical analysis of its structure.

Visual representation of the topology of the internet. Data was collected by thousands of world-wide volunteers through a distributed computing project called DIMES. Color code indicates a relative measure of node importance, with nodes in the most inner shell (red) forming the nucleus of the Internet.

"A better understanding of the internet's structure is important in many ways," said Shavitt. "We can track the internet's evolution in time and generate predictive models to its growth [which will] help us understand how the Internet will look a few years from now so we can plan ahead."

the Internet consists of a dense, heavily connected nucleus of about 100 nodes, including Google and U.S. telecommunications giant ATT WorldNet.