Every packet you send navigates a world where no router knows the whole path—just the next hop. How does data find its way through this controlled chaos?
The Internet isn't one network—it's thousands of independent networks that agreed on how to talk to each other. Each one is an autonomous system, and their relationships determine how your traffic moves.
The Internet isn't one network — it's over 70,000 independent networks that agreed to talk to each other. ASNs are how they identify themselves.
Every autonomous system on the Internet has a name behind it. Names like AMAZON-AES, GOOGLE, and COMCAST-7922 reveal the corporate topology of a network most people think is abstract.
BGP is the Internet's routing protocol—a trust system with no verification, where 70,000+ networks cooperate to route traffic based on nothing but handshake agreements.
Every organization on the Internet claims its territory by announcing IP prefixes into the global routing table. These announcements propagate on trust, reveal the shape of the Internet, and occasionally go catastrophically wrong.
BGP was built on trust. The Internet outgrew that assumption decades ago, but we're still running the same protocol—and attackers know it.
Without IXPs, your data climbs corporate ladders to cross the street. These neutral meeting grounds let networks connect directly—transforming the Internet from hierarchy to mesh.
The Internet isn't in the cloud—it's at the bottom of the ocean. Over 95% of international data travels through fiber optic cables thinner than a garden hose, lying in total darkness on the seafloor.
Anycast lets the same IP address exist in multiple places at once. When you connect, the Internet routes you to the nearest one—automatically, invisibly, and differently for everyone.
Every packet carries a self-destruct timer. Traceroute exploits this to map the invisible path your data takes across the Internet—by sending packets designed to die at specific distances.
The Internet isn't one network—it's thousands of independent networks, each deciding whether to forward your traffic. When a site works from one location but not another, you're seeing the seams.
When you run a WHOIS query, you get strings like APNIC-LABS and CLOUDFLARENET and DNIC-NET-215. These aren't random—they're a chain of custody for every piece of the Internet's address space.
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