The ANT Censuses of the Internet Address Space project at ISI has been collecting data by actively pinging all addresses in the allocated Internet address space. Amazingly, the visualization technique they used was inspired by one used for the same purpose in an xkcd webcomic.

“The figure above shows our map of the allocated address space. They layout follows Randall Munroe’s hand-drawn map of allocated Internet address blocks from xkcd #195. We convert the one-dimensional, 32-bit addresses into two dimensions using a ilbert Curve, as shown to the right. This curve keeps adjacent addresses physically near each other, and it is fractal, so we can zoom in or out to control detail.”

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