Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet (Hardcover)

from delphica

This was very exciting, in an armchair tech sort of way. The author goes out and visits various physical places where "the internet" happens, like major switching hubs, content storage, and the points where submarine communications cables COME OUT OF THE OCEAN LIKE A KRAKEN. As you can probably t...

from

A little dry at times but a fascinating idea and the author did a lot of research and went all over the world looking for the Internet. “To look for the Internet, I had gotten off the Internet. I had stepped away from my keyboard to look around and talk.”

from applemcg

blum delivers on the "center" of the internet as places. using (my terms) a graph-theory metaphor: edges and nodes, with equal attention to both. but only the stuff you can see. i.e. we don't hear much about the soft stuff. TCP/IP is mentioned, barely, HTTP not at all. email in terms of his sendi...

from jacoombs

A surprisingly compelling read about the hardware (tubes) or physical infrastructure that enables the Internet. Challenged at times by repeated descriptions of non-descript office buildings housing routers, wires and servers. At other times, though, almost mystical about the route our data takes ...

from cyclismotron

I was first alerted to this book when a short illustrative photo-essay was published in Wired, showing some of the facilities that the author had visited. Having embarked upon the information superhighway when geography still seemed like a relevant factor to the home user - UK game servers were a...