Tubes - Blum

In his first book, “Tubes” the journalist Andrew Blum (a writer for Wired), brings us an accessible book about the Internet.  Other books talk about the internet as if it were some ethereal place, the cloud, the net, cyberspace, etc. Blum attempts to capture the Internet’s physical reality in order for every user to understand and visualize what it really means to go to the internet.  In part, because he really does go to the Internet.  Not through his computer, not via some “Fantastic Voyage” where he shrinks to the size of an information bit and shoots down the copper and glass fiber connections of the internet to visit all of its body parts.  But rather by walking out his back door, following his ethernet cable, and tracking down one by one the building, facilities, and infrastructure where the bits and bytes physically go.  They can’t really go into a cloud can they?  The internet must exist in physical space...and so began his journey to the “Center of the Internet” to track down these physical spaces.  

Unlike science fiction stories, Blum’s journey to the “Center of the Internet” was both real and successful.  He found it.  Which is why his book is so good.  His discoveries at the very core of the internet provide us the correct context for understanding not only what it means to be on the information superhighway, but the correct way to use it.  When you finish the internet will no longer be a mystery to you.  Now it takes some thought.  This is not a book that you read and the answer manifests before you.  And it helps if you have at least considered previously where all these bits and bytes go.  For one, there are no pictures.  This is a shame because first Blum starts by talking to individuals who make maps the internet and second because he organizes his research into chunks of the internet that could easily be strung together with a couple of simple diagrams. But the information is there to build this diagram in your mind...but you have to think it through while mapping for yourself the things he talks about.  It helps to keep Google Earth up and running near where you are reading.

Blum also chose not to write a highly technical description of the routers, and servers along with the internet protocol that seamlessly work together to provide the illusion of an ethereal cyberspace.  Again, he delivers just enough that if you want to type internet protocol (IPv4 or IPv6) into Wikipedia you can swim as deep into the material as you need to go to fully understand how your bits and bytes are thrown around using what amounts to the first true genius of the internet.  Without the internet protocol, there is no internet, so it’s worth understanding.

Later in the book he briefly mentions an procedure anyone can do from their computer known as traceroute.  He doesn’t tell you what to do in the text but it’s easy.  In Windows Vista got to your START menu and choose Run.  Then type CMD into window to open an MSDOS Window.  Now you’re closer to the guts of your computer and the internet than most of us ever want to be.  At the command prompt type in “tracert” followed by a space and your favorite internet website...www.google.com or www.facebook.com are easy enough.  If you want to go to Europe pick something with an .eu like www.europa.eu for instance.  Then press return.  Bang...the bits and bytes leaving your computer are mapped through the physical network to their destination right before your eyes.  No more mystery.  Why Blum chose to let us figure this out for ourselves was a balancing act he must have done with his editor.  Since it reduces the technical jargon in the text and but still compels us to it ourselves, it makes for a richer experience.

If you chose to run a “tracert” look through the list of places the  journey from your computer has taken.  You will see your local router, then the router of your internet service provider.  Soon you will be out on the fiber headed towards an huge internet exchange. From there you will be off to perhaps several more exchanges, and if you choose to go to Europe, rocketing through an undersea cable to an exchange in London or other major exchange.  Then it’s off the the destination where your website is hosted on a server, perhaps at some giant data facility like Google or Facebook.  It’s really quite simple, but also really quite fascinating.  Andrew Blum as produced the right combination of history, technology, and geekdom to open this ubiquitous world to everyone.  

One question remains...who is paying for it all?  Blum fails to all but crack open the door to the financial side of this world...and it’s not clear why he backs away from this topic as well.  Since he is only talking about the infrastructure we can skip who pays for the free services we use such as Facebook and Google, they have their own elaborate finances that seem to deal with advertisers which pay for their colossal data centers with thousands and thousands of servers.  The rest of the infrastructure consists of the communications lines, like undersea cables, and the internet exchanges.  The cables are easy, they are paid for by investors, and the cables themselves are a resource that can be purchased or most likely leased.  We pay our ISP, who in turn builds the network close to home and into the back of our house.  What remains is the huge internet exchanges owned by companies like Equinix.  They have a separate model...and it is this model...and the ability to make money from this model, that creates the internet we know today.  It is the core...the center of the internet. And worth a journey to Ashburn Virginia to see, if not simply to drive by the buildings where it exists. To point to and say to your kids in the car, “behold, the internet!”.  Without that building in Ashburn nothing works.  There would be no internet.  So who is paying Equinix?  Someone definitely is...and that is the second true genius of the internet and the most compelling part of Blum’s work.  As it turns out most of the relationship around an internet exchange are not physical at all, they are human.  And where human’s meet in a marketplace, money changes hands. Equinix simply provides for this marketplace, like a flea market...without which there is no internet...genius...and I for one thank Andrew Blum for taking me on this journey with him.

I’m giving this book 5 stars.  It has flaws...but it’s a must read for everyone who uses the internet.