We all know the wonders of the internets and the seemingly instantaneous travel of datapackets over the wires (up to birds, etc.). But researchers at the University of Washington have discovered that, every day, 10% of the net’s linkages are dropped and data on them is frequently lost. These dark spots, known euphemistically in geekspeak as “reachability problems, have been more playfully dubbed “black holes,” with the software recently created to track them called Hubble. The researchers are hoping that, now that they’ve identified the problem, they can develop tools to track black holes in real time and create tools to fix such routing problems as they happen.
[Via Wired]
