Update: I've just installed the agent and it is pretty cool. It gives you a visual map of your agent's "traceroute"s based on IP, country or ISP. Simple and lovable.
The DIMES project(Distributed Internet MEasurements & Simulations) is an Israeli research initiative that aims to map the Internet. That's a pretty big task but they seem to have found a great way to do it. Like Seti@Home, they use volunteer computers to do their job (so if you want to help - you're welcome ), and it's working great. For example, they have a map of over 1,250,000 routers - the biggest one of all the other research labs, and we're basically talking about two programmers here, and not even enough money to keep all the data they are collecting...
In any case, they have a website, and even an RSS feed. Did I mention it's all open source?
You can check out some of the cool graphical maps they've created here. For example - The Internet IP graph
Now, here's a really cool thing:
"We have developed a new mapping and visualization tool based on Google Maps: The DIMES Internet Mapper. For the first time, it allows you to visually study the connectivity of every city in the world. "
If you do plan on joining the effort - when you first install the agent on your machine - you are able to pick a group you belong to. I've created a specialized group for us bloggers and blog reader. Let's see how many we can put on there. It's called the "Blog-Geeks" group and you join it when you first install the application on your machine.
See you there!
Great idea, great execution.
Israeli Coolness.
[via YNet (Hebrew)]