Untangling a Web: The Internet gets a new look

The Internet may be everywhere and nowhere, but that’s not stopping information engineers from mapping it. An atlas that accurately shows the physical path of information from one computer to another could protect the Internet from massive failures after, say, an earthquake or a terrorist attack. The latest finding by Internet cartographers offers some good news: Routing computers—the hardware that directs bits of information around the world—are linked in a way that makes the Internet less susceptible to a centralized attack than past studies had indicated.