Who Owns the Internet

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Article at http://advice.cio.com/node/209

Map was at http://advice.cio.com/themes/CIO.com/cache/Internet_map_labels_0.pdf. It's owner Lumeta (http://www.lumeta.com) took it back from CIO.

The map covers the US only, not the last mile, but on the backbone, i.e. where a packet goes after it passes through the last mile and into the core of the Internet.


Description

"the North American Internet, or more specifically a map of just about every router on the North American backbone, (there are 134,855 of them for those who are counting). The colors represent who each router is registered to. Red is Verizon; blue AT&T; yellow Qwest; green is major backbone players like Level 3 and Sprint Nextel; black is the entire cable industry put together; and gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S."

"So what can we conclude by looking at this? For starters, while AT&T and Verizon are clearly the two biggest owners at the core (they dwarf Qwest, the other remaining baby bell), they don’t own anywhere near enough for us to be worried about a monopoly. Also, the cable companies really own very little of the core, which isn’t much of a surprise since they are primarily focused on the last mile."