Just Finished Reading: Tubes – Behind the Scenes at the Internet by Andrew Blum (FP 2012)

As most stories do, this began with a squirrel. The squirrel in question had climbed up the authors nearby ‘telegraph’ pole and had bitten through his Internet cable – not that he knew that at the time his Internet connection inexplicably failed. Tech Support sent an engineer to investigate and with little else to do until the problem was resolved the author tagged along as asked questions – lots of questions. Like most people (myself largely included) he had never really thought about the Internet as a physical thing. It was, we are all told, ‘out there’ somewhere in the ‘cloud’. We hit ‘send’ and as if by magic an e-mail message simply appears thousands of miles away seconds later. After the squirrel incident the author wanted to know exactly where the cable went after it left his modem and vanished into the wall cavity – so he did exactly that and followed the tube.

If you’ve ever wondered in an idle moment where exactly the Internet is then this is definitely the book for you. Rather than see the ‘Net as some new form of existence in Cyberspace this fascinating and often humorous book looks for the actual stuff – the hardware – that makes it all work. From the Distribution Point at the end of his street to the Hub in his local town centre, to the huge data farms dotted across the planet to the truly massive, and surprisingly few, Internet Exchanges in cities such as Frankfurt (Germany), London, New York, Seattle, Tokyo and Milan the author did what any good investigator needs to do – he followed the data and followed the money. I found it interesting, to say the least, how the Internet was essentially cobbled together as and when it was needed, the speed it grew once it took off (amazingly not that long ago almost all of the world’s internet traffic went through a single Exchange that today would barely deserve the name) and the vast quantity of data that passes across it on a minute by minute basis – I actually went onto the Frankfurt IX website and discovered that they had exceeded the throughput mentioned in the book (published in 2012) by a considerable amount already and was still growing.

If you’re simply a Geek this book will undoubtedly delight you. If you’re just a user of the Internet with only the vaguest idea of what connects to what but have ever just wondered while waiting for something to download where exactly that video is coming from or how you can navigate to a website in Nova Scotia or Nantucket then this book is for you too. Rather than taking any of the magic away knowing something of how things actually work enhances rather than reduces the wow factor. Highly recommended for everyone who spends time online – and that means just about everyone these days.