OPTE claims that they have mapped the internet. Their aim is to be able to map the internet in a day.The map itself is not big news but how fast this new mapping technique seams to be. I'm sure that once they release the data there will be a paper published somewhere with a detailed study of the topology of the network and more importantly the dynamics of the process. I would not be surprised if Barabasi is one of the authors.

From the OPTE FAQ:
"1.2 How the heck do you map the Internet in one day!?
Opte uses a unique idea. Boarder Gateway Protocol (BGP) generally does not deal with classless or subneted networks. Instead of mapping every single IP address on the Internet (theoretical maximum of 2^32=4,294,967,296 hosts) we simply traceroute to each class C network. This reduces the theoretical maximum to 16,777,216 hosts. On top of that, you can remove the Arin Reserved network addresses, which include about 47 class A networks. This again reduces the theoretical list to around 13,697,024 blocks. Utilizing Dan Kaminski's scanrand2 tool from his Paketto kit, we can process a theoretical 16,000 class C networks per 6 seconds. This processing is then placed into the Opte MySQL database where it is then later converted into LGL formatted code."


The Opte Project

The slashdot post