Editing Network mapping (section)

==Large-scale mapping project==
Images of some of the first attempts at a large scale map of the internet were produced by the [[Internet Mapping Project]] and appeared in ''[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]'' magazine. The maps produced by this project were based on the [[Network Layer|layer 3]] or [[Internet Protocol|IP]] level connectivity of the Internet (see [[OSI model]]), but there are different aspects of internet structure that have also been mapped.

More recent efforts to map the internet have been improved by more sophisticated methods, allowing them to make faster and more sensible maps.  An example of such an effort is the [[Opte Project|OPTE project]], which is attempting to develop a system capable of mapping the internet in a single day.

The "Map of the Internet Project" maps over 4 billion internet locations as cubes in 3D [[cyberspace]].  Users can add [[Uniform Resource Locator|URL]]s as cubes and re-arrange objects on the map.

In early 2011 Canadian based ISP [[Peer 1|PEER 1 Hosting]] created their own [[Map of the Internet]] that depicts a graph of 19,869 [[Autonomous system (Internet)|autonomous system]] nodes connected by 44,344 connections. The sizing and layout of the autonomous systems was calculated based on their [[eigenvector]] centrality, which is a measure of how central to the network each autonomous system is.

[[Graph theory]] can be used to better understand maps of the internet and to help choose between the many ways to [[Information visualization|visualize]] internet maps. Some projects have attempted to incorporate geographical data into their internet maps (for example, to draw locations of [[Router (computing)|router]]s and [[node (networking)|node]]s on a map of the world), but others are only concerned with representing the more abstract structures of the internet, such as the allocation, structure, and purpose of [[IPv4|IP space]].