What is a customer cone?

It is the AS itself plus every AS reachable from it by following only provider-to-customer links in observed BGP paths. CAIDA can count the cone in ASes, IPv4 prefixes or IPv4 addresses.

Does a high rank mean a network carries the most traffic?

No. The rank is built from inferred provider-to-customer relationships, not from traffic measurements, so it shows customer reach rather than volume.

The Border Gateway Protocol is how networks exchange routing information about which address blocks they can reach. CAIDA infers AS relationships from BGP paths.

Internet Backbone Rankings Screensaver

The Internet Backbone Rankings screensaver shows the networks that actually carry the internet, ranked by CAIDA's customer-cone measure — how much of the internet each one can reach through its own customers. Read key-less from CAIDA's AS Rank API. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.

How the Internet Backbone Rankings screensaver works

The saver reads CAIDA AS Rank directly in your browser — no key and no account.

The networks that actually carry the internet, ranked by CAIDA's customer-cone measure — how much of the internet each one can reach through its own customers.

It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.

Colours can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.

What an Autonomous System is

The internet is a network of networks, and each independently run network is called an Autonomous System, identified by an AS number. Internet service providers, universities, cloud companies and large enterprises each operate one or more, and they exchange routing information using the Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP.

CAIDA, the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis, is based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on the UC San Diego campus, and it publishes AS Rank. An AS’s customer cone is the AS itself plus every AS reachable from it by following only provider-to-customer links seen in BGP paths. Cones can be counted in ASes, in IPv4 prefixes or in IPv4 addresses. If network A sells transit to B, and B sells transit to C, both B and C fall in A’s cone, so large transit providers rank near the top.

The relationships are inferred from public BGP data, collected by projects such as RouteViews and RIPE RIS, rather than read from contracts, so some classifications are estimates. Cone size measures customer reach, not traffic volume or speed, so the result is a structural view of the routing hierarchy and not a quality ranking.

A worked example

The networks that actually carry the internet, ranked by CAIDA's customer-cone measure — how much of the internet each one can reach through its own customers. Read key-less from CAIDA's AS Rank API.

Settings & tips

Accent and Background recolour the display.
Data comes straight from CAIDA AS Rank in your browser.
Press ESC to leave fullscreen.

Frequently asked questions

Is this real data?: Yes — it comes from CAIDA AS Rank and is refreshed on a schedule.
Is a key needed?: No. This source is fully key-less.
Is it free?: Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
What is a customer cone?: It is the AS itself plus every AS reachable from it by following only provider-to-customer links in observed BGP paths. CAIDA can count the cone in ASes, IPv4 prefixes or IPv4 addresses.
Does a high rank mean a network carries the most traffic?: No. The rank is built from inferred provider-to-customer relationships, not from traffic measurements, so it shows customer reach rather than volume.
What is BGP?: The Border Gateway Protocol is how networks exchange routing information about which address blocks they can reach. CAIDA infers AS relationships from BGP paths.

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