Scientists suggest that the internet goes to sleep a bit like human beings do.
According to Professor John Heidemann at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, the results of a survey he conducted will help people to make better systems to measure and track internet outages.
“Understanding how the internet sleep will help avoid confusing a sleeping internet with an internet outage,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, the richer a country is, the more likely it is that the internet will develop insomnia rather than nodding off and having a good nap.
“While the internet is always up and running for some, such as those with broadband access in the US and Europe, in other areas, people’s access to the internet varies over the course of the day, notably in Asia, South America and Eastern Europe,” said Heidemann.
To discover the way the internet works, Heidemann and his team pinged 3.7 million address blocks – that’s about 950 million addresses – every 11 minutes over two months.
