A Texas-based computer scientist and a self-proclaimed internet cartographer John Matherly pinged every connected internet device in the world to compile a map of the location of every device connected to the internet during the 5 hour time period it took John to compile the data.
Pinged all devices on the Internet, here’s a map of where they’re located 🙂 pic.twitter.com/G3fiNcKCul
— John Matherly (@achillean) August 28, 2014
Pinging is a simple way network engineers use to determine whether a device is reachable over a network. A signal is sent out to a particular IP address of a network connected device and a response sent back if the device is on. Every time John’s ping received a response, an open source software program checked the location of the IP address, based on a freely available database on the internet and created a point on the map.
The more points detected in a particular area, the more red the area on the map became.
It took John, the founder of the Shodan search engine, 12 hours to generate the map, based on the data collected.
According to his twitter, he plans to repeat the process and track the changing results over time.
Now that’s cool!
Source: Bzzill.com