When you have an entire data base collecting information, it can then use algorithms to point in directions which are of concern.
Side streets and easements are cicso machinery that come off the backbone. There are major internet traffic highways, last I heard like 17 major hubs, then thousands of pieces of Cisco hardware off of that.
The surface streets would be things like LANS and WANS.
You have to know how the internet was designed. It was designed to be a communication network that could survive a nuclear strike. If a major internet highway or hub was down (or vaporized) the routing would still be possible through lower levels of routers.
Internet Exchange Points. The communications traffic on the Internet backbone is exchanged at large Internet Exchange Points (IXP), sometimes called Network Access Points (NAP) or Metropolitan Area Exchanges (MAE), constituting the top level of the Internet network topology. The first five large NAP's in North America were established in the 1990's in Chicago, New Jersey, San Francisco, San Jose, and Washington, D.C. The following sites maintain current indexes of IXPs, many of which provide statistics and graphs of the performance of their major nodes:
My example is perhaps a bit simplistic. Remember that “the Internet” as you all know it is a conglomeration of things you access through a web browser. It’s a digital library, much of which is filled with porn, selfies, and pictures of cats. It’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
All of this is cataloged by ICANN and IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). This of them as the digital equivalent of a card catalog at a library or an atlas for the highway analogy. You could wander around a library for long enough that you’d find the section housing your particular interest, but it’s a lot faster to use the card catalog. Likewise, you could very easily plot a travel plan that avoids interstates and/or highways, and unless you travel up to the banks of Lake Okeechobee or the foothills of the Rockies, you won’t have much of an issue making your way. There are long-standing guides, think of them like digital compasses, that can keep you on some sort of track.
Where a magnetic compass could keep you traveling in a particular direction, so too could you use tools to traverse the Internet to find information. This “handover” isn’t giving over anything other than a very big phone book. It’s ceding control of the card catalog. The most they’ll do is rearrange the library or mess up our atlases. If you are of a mind to go back to old ways, you can still find your way around.
I’ll be more concerned when they start talking about configuring global firewalls “for our safety.” This is merely taking the publishing of a phone book away from your local papermill and handing it over to some international body. It’s likely we’ll just see a lot more mistakes in the catalog than anything insidious.