Internet users are if; they are aware of it or not, increasingly confronted with "Black Holes" on the Internet. For example, the website they want to load seems to be unavailable, or more serious email disappears into thin air.

We got so accustomed to always working Internet connections that unreliability is hard for us to believe.

According to researchers from the University of Washington these occurrences are becoming more and more an everyday reality.

To show that this is a real and hard claim, they developed an interactive online world map that is refreshed every fifteen minutes. (http://hubble.cs.washington.edu/ )

This map shows you in real-time where the problem areas on the net are and how long they all ready exist. Colored flags show you the location and duration of the problems. They also tell you what IP address blocks are having difficulties.

The map is a result of a monitoring system the researchers team calls Hubble. The name can be a tribute to the Hubble space telescope or to the man that made it possible to measure distances in the University. A spokesman of the University said it was both, they two are inseparable.

Our new Internet Hubble employs different technologies to discover and identify affected areas and ip address blocks. A problems exists when it becomes impossible for one group of addresses to contact others addresses, the funny part is its not about malfunctions. Links are under normal operation and other traffic seems to be unaffected.

During the first three weeks of operation Hubbie discovered more than 31000 problems. Areas under normal operation but where communication from or to certain areas seemed to disappear. For example only 5000 of reported incident areas seemed to have problems connecting themselves and where completely unreachable.

The preliminary conclusion, I didn't receive your email can hold ground after all, and that can have legal repercussions.