Exploring Internet Geography

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Exploring Internet Geography
3011 Geographies of Cyberspace

• Martin Dodge
• (m.dodge_at_ucl.ac.uk)
• Practical 2, Friday 15th October 2004
• http//www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace

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Todays practical

• using traceroute utility to explore and map
  Internet geography
• a bit of image editing using Photoshop
• making a new web page of traceroute results using
  Dreamweaver

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Exploring Internet geography yourself

• a number of interesting tools for measuring and
  monitoring the operation and traffic on the
  Internet, in real-time
• useful to expose some of network geopolitics
• see how your data flows from point A to B
• tells you how many "hops", which routers are
  traversed
• tells you how quickly things are moving
• identifying problems, bottlenecks and blockages
• try to tie this to geographic locations
• also reveals which companys networks are
  traversed
• you can see how complex routes through the
  Internet often are

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Tracing the Internet

• traceroute are utilities to explore the actual
  route data travels
• traceroute utilities come in three basic types -
  simple text ones, graphical and geographical
• its an imprecise science, particularly for
  geographic traceroutes
• we are going to be using a geographical
  traceroute called VisualRoute
• freely available on the web

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Have a go at tracing the Internet yourself

• first you need to choose some target places on
  the Internet to run traces to
• you must choose 2 websites of geography
  departments in different parts of the world
• choose 1 department from somewhere in Europe, and
  then 1 other departments in another continent
• use the comprehensive listing of academic
  geography departments by Klaus Förster
  (University of Innsbruck) to make your selection

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List of geography dept. web siteshttp//univ.cc/g
eolinks/simple.php
Watch out - occasionally some of the links are to
email address, not websites. Just ignore these
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• check that the websites of the 2 departments you
  chose are actually working by opening their
  homepage
• I chose the University of Punjabs Department of
  Geography as an example

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• you want to note down just the domain name of
  your websites - http//this.bit.needed/blah/blah
• so in my case www.pu.edu.pk
• now you start up the traceroute program. using
  Internet Explorer (not Netscape), go to
• http//visualroute.visualware.co.uk/
• (this may take a while to fully load - please be
  patient)

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• first you need to register to use the service.
  enter your email address in the box and press
  Go!

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• you should see this window and wait a minute and
  check your email for a confirmation message from
  VisualRoute

• click on the web link in the confirmation email

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• Now you should be ready to run a traceroute from
  Surrey, England, across the world to your chosen
  websites
• In the Enter Host/URL box, enter the domain
  name of your first geography department
• then press enter

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The traceroute output

• If you click on the snap button you can see the
  table of results more clearly in a pop-up window

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Decoding your traceroute

• how many hops were taken?
• how many different countries did the data travel
  through?
• how many different networks?
• Is this the most direct route geographically?
• at what point in the trace does the performance
  slow? Is this related to crossing an ocean?
• now repeat the traceroute for the other geography
  departments
• think about how the two traces differ. how does
  the number of hops in the trace correlate with
  geographic distance?

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Making new web page of the traceroute result

• choose the 1 of your traceroutes that has the
  most interesting geographical route
• the results of this will be put on new web
• this time you will focus on putting images into
  the web page
• you will need to take screen shots of the
  geography department homepage and also the
  VisualRoute results page
• to take a screenshot, simply use the PrtScn key
  on the keyboard. (top, right hand side)

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Images on web pages

• 3 formats of images that you can use - jpg, gif
  and png
• jpg format images are good for photographs
• gif is good for simple graphics and line art
• png is good for complex graphics
• we will use png format images today

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Manipulating images

• for the web you need to keep images relatively
  small, so they load fast (esp. for people at home
  on slow modems)
• you need to crop and shrink images
• you will use Photoshop Elements to do this. It is
  a specialised graphics application for
  manipulating images and photos
• start Photoshop
• go to Start button -gt Programs -gt Graphics
  Packages -gt Photoshop Elements

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this is what you should see - Photoshop
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• now display VisualRoute showing the best
  traceroute full on screen and then press the Prt
  Scn key
• switch to Photoshop and then go File -gt From
  Clipboard

the VisualRoute screen will now be in
Photoshop so you can alter it
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• crop the image to remove junk around the
  traceroute results part of the screen image
• select the Crop tool and then click-and-drag to
  highlight the central portion of the image you
  need

the crop tool

• when you are happy
• with your selection,
• right-click and Crop

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this is what you should see, just an image of
the traceroute results
now you need to resize the traceroute image to
make a smaller version for your web page, go
Image -gt Resize -gt Image Size set the width to
about 300 pixels
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now you must save the image. you need to save it
in your html.pub directory. This is at
R/html.pub

• go File -gt Save As
• the Filename should be
• traceroute.png
• the Format must be PNG

you will be asked a final question about PNG
Options - choose None
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• now you need to capture the screen of the
  geography department page (PrtScn)
• paste this into Photoshop, just as before
• (you probably do not need to crop this image)
• resize the image, to about 300 pixel width and
  then save it into your html.pub directory called
  homepage.png.
• now you have your images ready for the web. you
  can quit Photoshop

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Making a traceroute web page

• you are going to make a fancy new web page of the
  traceroute results
• start Dreamweaver
• set the page title for your new page, to
  something like Traceroute, your name, 15th
  October 2004. (Modify -gt Page Properties)
• save the web page to your html.pub directory.
  call the new file traceroute.html
• now add a large title at the top of the page.
  choose a nice font/colour for the title

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next you need to insert a table for the 2
images. the table should have 1 row and 2
columns width is 95
Traceroute from Surrey England to Punjab, Pakistan
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put the cursor in the left hand cell of the table
and then click on the Insert Image button. In the
html.pub directory choose the traceroute.png
file
Traceroute from Surrey England to Punjab, Pakistan
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• next, add in the webpage.png image into the
  right hand cell of the table
• underneath the table of the 2 images, write a
  couple of lines describing the geography of the
  data path and the different networks traversed in
  the trace
• now you are ready to add some hyperlinks
• you need to hyperlink the traceroute image to
  http//visualroute.visualware.co.uk and the
  homepage image to actual web page. you add the
  URLs into the Link box on the toolbar

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• in the description of the traceroute you wrote
  under the images, hyperlink the name of the
  geography department to their homepage
• preview your web page now to see how it is
  displayed in a browser (File -gt Preview in
  Browser)
• when you are happy with the page design, save it
  again (in your html.pub directory)

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• just like for your cv web page, you now need to
  run a program to make traceroute.html visible
  on the web
• go to Start button -gt Programs -gt Internet
  Software -gt Publish Web Pages
• remember to type in your username and password
  carefully

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• your traceroute web page should now be online
• open the page in web browser, it will be at
• http//www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/xxxxxxx/traceroute
  .html
• (where xxxxxxx is your username)
• For example, here is a version that I created
  last year
• http//www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/ucfnmad/traceroute
  .html
• email me the address of your web page so I can
  check it
• (m.dodge_at_ucl.ac.uk)

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Going a bit further

• some optional extras for the speedy people
• try out the Mapnet tool and see if you can find
  any of the networks used in your traceroute
• www.caida.org/tools/visualization/mapnet/
• see if you can find the corporate website of one
  of the networking companies in your traceroute
  and see if you can find a map of their network
  infrastructure
• why not add more images to your traceroute web
  page showing any interesting network maps youve
  been able to find?