From what i understand, nudone, you'd like to make some scaled drawing, right?
Well.. I think that souldn't be very easy, just take a look at the link f0dder provided. Although i'm not exactly sure about what those graphs refer to, they mention values from 20gbps to 120gbps.
I have a pretty fast connection, and all i get is 24mbps. That means you'd have to represent their tubes 1000+ times bigger than mine. Makes a scaled drawing a bit dificult.

As for the organization of the internet, i'm pretty sure i've seen a bunch of "internet maps" here on DC that contain the basic concepts like DNS and such. I had no luck with a search, though :/

as the idea of the diagram is to make things 'simple' to grasp then it looks like quite a bit of detail would have to be ignored really.

as for scales being accurate - that could be done by having zoomed in and out views. i had a look through google and i've not seen anything there that looks like what i'm trying to describe.

these are the sorts of things i'm thinking of (as they are easy to relate to).

56k connection - a human hair.

typical domestic broadband - drinking straw.

gigabit - i don't know, maybe a 6 inch diameter pipe.

other stuff i don't know the terms of.

typical connection between isp and 'internet' - pipe with 20 feet diameter.

typical connection between countries - pipe with 1000 feet diameter.

numbers are arbitrary as i haven't a clue.

then, with the general sizes/number/capacities i could put them onto a globe - zoom in and out views with cross sections of pipes within pipes.

any other devices like routers or whatever could be represented in some other quirky form.

perhaps i'll just draw it and ignore the correct scales - then if someone sees it and knows better they can correct me and i'll update it. or i'll just do a really stupid cody version then i can use magic to make it all work.

i guess what i'm aiming at is a colored cody diagram thing not unlike what william heath robinson was so great at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Robinson well, i can dream can't i.

if you're looking for a proper way to illustrate something, check the periodic table of visualization
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

nice find.

I also wonder if there's multiple "internets", or if everything is so interconnected today that we only have The Internet^TM.

Any AOL user will tell you there are multiple internets. It's very possible to be on one and not have access to the one you know of.

What this means is that if you have something wrong on your pc, only things that are aol:// are accessable..the rest is as if it doesn't exist.

There is a whole world there...chat, email, news, weather, music, software, video, blogs, forums, special interest communities, etc.

For a long time, that was all AOL users had...that was how they got the reputation of being 'the walled garden'. Then they opened up access to the real internet, outside the wall, to their members. Now they have opened up access to the AOL content to the rest of the world, for free. You still need their software to get the 'AOL only' content, though.

Even though they have done this, it's still possible that a dialup AOL member could have something wrong on their pc and only get the AOL content. At least there is enough there to keep you sane while you find a solution to your problem, which can be found either in the help community, some of the geek chats, or on one of their forums.