I came along an interesting site about the cartography of the web, called Mappa.Mundi Magazine. 
The following study drew my attention:
Researcher, Young Hyun, at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) has started developing a graph visualization tool, with the code-name ‘Walrus’.
The illustration below, depicts an Internet topology, as measured by CAIDA’s skitter monitor based in London, showing 535,000-odd Internet nodes and over 600,000 links. The nodes, represented by the yellow dots, are a large sample of computers from across the whole range of Internet addresses.
Walrus is an interactive visualization tool that allows the analyst to view massive graphs from any position. The graph is projected inside a 3D sphere using a special kind of space based hyperbolic geometry. This is a non-Euclidean space, which has useful distorting properties of making elements at the center of the display much larger than those on the periphery. You interact with the graph in Walrus by selecting a node of interest, which is smoothly moved into the center of the display, and that region of the graph becomes greatly enlarged, enabling you to focus on the fine detail. Yet the rest of the graph remains visible, providing valuable context of the overall structure. (There are some animations available on the website showing Walrus graphs being moved, which give some sense of what this is like.) Hyperbolic space projection is commonly know as “focus+context” in the field of information visualization and has been used to display all kinds of data that can be represented as large graphs in either two and three dimensions . It can be thought of as a moveable fish-eye lens. The Walrus visualization tool draws much from the hyperbolic research by Tamara Munzner as part of her PhD at Stanford. (Map of the Month examined some of Munzner’s work from 1996 in an earlier article, Internet Arcs Around The Globe.)
As Martin Dodge notes in the end of the article: this is not a real shape of the internet, since
There is no inherently “natural” shape when visualizing massive data, such as the topology of the global Internet, in an abstract space.
It is however a network, which visualizes how undemocratic the web is (in certain cases). Some yellow dots have much larger number of links, in comparison to some poor others.
Terry Heath responded on 13 Jan 2008 at 9:47 pm #
That is an interesting visualization of the web, it’s also interesting the graph looks so much like the globe . . . but I doubt as much internet activity is taking place at the north pole as this would show, unless this graph was made over the Christmas season.
robojiannis responded on 13 Jan 2008 at 9:51 pm #
@ Terry
The description says, that it ain’t earth. “The graph is projected inside a 3D sphere using a special kind of space based hyperbolic geometry.”
Terry Heath responded on 13 Jan 2008 at 9:55 pm #
I got that part, it just struck me how it seemed to show the two hemispheres where activity would be. I didn’t really think Santa Claus generated all that internet activity. LOL
As interesting as the graph is, I can’t say I really get the visualization it is trying to create.
robojiannis responded on 13 Jan 2008 at 10:43 pm #
@Terry
He…damn writing. it’s tough to get the jokes