A novel map of the internet created by Marián Boguñá and colleagues at the University of Barcelona, Spain, could help make network glitches a thing of the past.

Boguñá squeezed the entire network into a disc using hyperbolic geometry, more familiar to us through the circular mosaic-like artworks of M. C. Escher.

Each square on the map is an “autonomous system” – a section of the network managed by a single body such as a national government or a service provider. The most well-connected systems are close to the centre, while the least connected are at the edges. The area of the hyperbolic plane grows exponentially with distance from the centre, so the edges of the map are “roomier” than the middle.

Like all good cartographers, Boguñá’s team hopes their map will help speed up navigation. At present each system routes traffic by referring to a table of all available network paths, but keeping this up to date is difficult as new paths keep coming on stream while others shut down.