The mapping technology can reveal insights about large networks. We've used these tools on intranets as well, to help show our company's connectivity. Some intranet maps clearly show routing leaks and other errors. We have used colors to show insecure regions, new acquisitions, and rare domains (domains with very few mapped hosts), which usually denote a leak or misconfiguration. The maps helped debug our corporate routing table, which contained route announcements for lsu.edu and the US Postal Service.
The Internet maps, while seemingly less useful have certainly excited the media, who lacks good visuals of the Internet [25] [26]. From a less scientific standpoint, the maps are interesting to look at, and one publisher created a poster out of it [27].
A number of researchers have picked up the routing database and run it through their visualization tools or run graph-theoretic analyses of it, and one paper (that we know of) has resulted so far [3]. As the data collection began in August, 1998, it provides a good deal of information about routing for a longer period of time than most routing studies to date have employed.