What is the shape of the internet?

The Internet is a global association of computer networks. Pursuing various goals, you can try to draw the form of some structures of this complex system, but the result can hardly be called visual.

We see clouds every day, servers at least in pictures, communication lines are also familiar to many. If you need an illustration for these concepts, then there is an icon. But with the Internet in the mind is not associated any clear image that could be touched. Therefore, of particular interest is the way the Internet is portrayed in charts and diagrams.

There is one form of cloud icon in the world . These are two pairs of circles with a diameter of 1 and 1.6, located in the golden ratio. If the company provides any services in the field of cloud computing, then the icon almost always has this shape, only the color and texture change. As Noah Veltman noted , the Internet is depicted differently in patents. The following are examples.

It can be a cucumber-like figure, a road, or a pointed explosion. Most often it is still a cloud of its original form. US6574606B1 : Methods and systems for cross-marketing products and services through a distributed communication network. According to the authors of this patent, the Internet is a big amoeba. US5905872A




: Methods of transmitting connection management information in requests and responses of the World Wide Web. Here the Internet is presented in the form of a cloud of the original form. Data passes through several routers and reaches the destination. US6182085B1 : Getting information from the Internet on a large scale. The Internet is depicted in a circle similar to a radar screen. US6618585B1 : Broadcast receiving device with Internet functions. US6081899A : Timestamp Authority Protocol and its associated validation system. US6190178B1 : Remote education and Internet governance. The authors of the patent considered that the Network should be depicted in the form of peanuts. US5729594A









: A secure online financial transaction system through electronic media. The Internet is presented in the form of interconnected nodes that live in amoeba. US6389005B1 : Automatically establishes a backup voice connection over the Internet. Another amoeba. US5870718A : A computer printer terminal for the production of composite greeting and gift cards. The network connection is shown as a bar and is called "Internet Highway." US6301607B2 : Systematization and method for displaying and sharing images. The Internet is a cloud, and for some reason there are several of them at once. US7069299B2 : Method for creating and managing cyber conferences involving paper presentations. US20050045710A1









: Amusement park system. The network is simply called cyberspace.

In general, the Internet is most often depicted as a rapidly scattered cloud, similar to a foamed piece of burnt baking. But there are some interesting specimens. US6125353A : Shopping center server with product search capabilities. Connections jump over the Internet cloud and reach the server house. US6058422A : Wireless Internet Access System. The network is presented in the form of a formless sloppiness in which the server with the site “lives”. US 5938737 A : Compression of upstream requests. About the same. Other ways to draw a cloud can be found on the author’s website .










Map of the underwater Internet from 2013 from TeleGeography
Map of the underwater Internet from 2014 from TeleGeography
Map of the underwater Internet from 2015 from TeleGeography
Map of the Internet from the search engine Shodan