June 3, 2003
Where is All the Data Flowing?... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
I don't know if you're ever come across that nifty website called Internettrafficreport.com, but by its own description, it "monitors the flow of data around the world."
In keeping with our get-it-fast, get-it-now Internet sensibilities, it's updated every 5 minutes, and you can actually get a sense of digital traffic jams on a global basis.
Remember the Internet flash flood when the digital version of the Kevin Starr-Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinski report was released? Here's the place to watch the action. Whether a major gateway goes down, or simply everyone on the East Coast of the US wakes up, you can see it for a fact.
And with the existence of all this data, it's easy to envision standing in an airport, looking up at one of those TV monitors broadcasting CNN Headline news. The 21st century version of a traffic reporter would be standing in front of a world map, telling us where all the digital crashes are.
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The basic measurement the Internet Traffic Report uses is called a "ping," the "round-trip travel time along major paths on the Internet." The difference between one round-trip and another is measured in milli-seconds, but it's the history of travel times that tell the tale.
Every round trip is rated on a scale from zero to 100, where zero means exactly that - there is no response - and 100 means the system is operating at its fastest. Average these times throughout the world, and the Internet traffic picture begins to reveal itself.
To be clear, "pings" aren't just launched from a single place, but rather they originate from servers all over the world, so you might look at it this way: Take San Francisco. It's just 7 miles by 7 miles, but even so, let's say you sprinkled people throughout the city, and told them, "Go to City Hall." Depending on where you started, the time of day, the day of the week, the weather and that bane of urban travel: roadwork, a round trip could vary a lot.
And so it is with the Internet.
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Just like city dwellers everywhere, the Internet has its own savvy taxi drivers. Is it before 4:00 PM? You can still make a left turn onto that street! Is there a Giant's game? Take the western route. You see, the Internet has something called "routers," which move the tiny packets of data dynamically through the network, primed for optimal movement. But just as cab drivers sometimes find they've outsmarted themselves, even the routers get bogged down.
The good news is you don't need to know any of this to understand what you're seeing. The Internet Traffic Report keeps giving you network-wide averages of between zero and 100, from various sites and various continents.
As you might imagine, there's lots of data here - both past and present - on this website, and frankly, I find watching the data flow enthralling. What are the patterns? What does it mean? It somehow draws me in with the same compelling fascination as flowing water or a winter's fire.
And here's the fun part: Forever more, what we see there will continue to change, and grow. Remember this website - Internettrafficreport.com - and watch: It's a picture of who we are now, and who we are becoming: digital humanity.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
