A nervous system without body
Breath without lungs
The internet, dreaming
The internet is made of tens of thousands of separate networks, run by ISPs, universities, companies and cloud providers. They tell each other how to reach every address online using a protocol called BGP, and those routes change constantly.
Each stroke is one of those route announcements, received a moment ago from a RIPE NCC route collector at an internet exchange. Every bend in the stroke is a network the route passes through on its way to its destination.
Each network always lands in the same spot, so routes through busy networks keep crossing the same places. A stroke's colour comes from the network it leads to. Strokes fade but leave a faint ghost, and nothing is stored or replayed.
The collector setting changes which exchange you're listening from. Sound is optional: each stroke plays a note set by its position and colour.
Routing data from RIPE NCC RIS Live. Source on GitHub.
Made by Ruy Zambrano.