IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT

Almost all of the original steam-driven sections of the Internet were scrapped in the name of progress as electrical systems were introduced.
However, it is a little known fact that, even today, the Internet still relies on some steam-driven sections, mostly for little trodden routes to some of the more obscure domains.
Additionally, several more steam-driven sections are maintained as backup systems in case of failure or to be used during system upgrades and maintenance of primary systems. This is particularly the case for government websites where the pace of technological change is often glacial.

However, if you know where to look, and, importantly, when to look, you can still find these aged steam sections still doing their job admirably, just as Huxley, McGinley and Beardie intended.

TRACE IT

Why not try for yourself? Firstly, you need a route tracing program such as the TRACERT program supplied with Windows. A route tracing program allows you to see the series of computers and routers that data travels to between your computer and any website.
Once equipped with a route tracing program, run a route trace to a large institutional website. You may have to run the trace several times at various times of day, particularly at night when system maintenance is taking place.

We ran the following trace to the IRS website late one night:

C:\>tracert www.irs.gov
Tracing route to a321.g.akamai.net [67.114.52.68] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1
3 50 ms 48 ms 47 ms 63-191-17-14.dial.stjs.pacbell.net [63.191.17.14]
4 51 ms 50 ms 48 ms home7-lan30.delw14.pbi.net [216.80.187.3]
5 51 ms 48 ms 51 ms bb1-g9-1-2.snfcca.sbcglobal.net [216.80.3.17]
6 181 ms 126 ms 69 ms core1-p6-1.crsfca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.243.121]
7 50 ms 57 ms 51 ms core2-p1-0.crsfca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.242.242]
8 353 ms 276 ms 312 ms core1-p11-0.crscca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.242.89]
9 287 ms 55 ms 260 ms core2-p8-0.crscca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.241.238]
10 221 ms 189 ms 133 ms core1-p3-0.cranca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.242.186]
11 318 ms 205 ms 193 ms core2-p1-0.cranca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.241.222]
12 294 ms 244 ms 343 ms bb1-p5-0.irvnca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.41.17]
13 730 ms 876 ms 802 ms stm3.prvs.tnk.net [67.114.49.20]
14 908 ms * 972 ms 67-114-52-68.deploy.akamaitechnologies.net [67.1 14.52.68]

Trace complete.

C:\>

READ IT

Look closely at line number 13 in the trace output above.

You will see that the router at this point in the link is called stm3.prvs.tnk.net. This is the first telltale sign that this link is an original steam-driven link: the prefix "stm" is commonly used by network engineers to denote any steam based equipment.

Another sign is that the time taken for data to travel to this router (the far end of the steam link) is considerably longer than the previous series of routers. This is because, by today's standards, steam links are quite slow: although steam had become a very refined technology by the time it was replaced by electrical systems, data transmission speeds were restricted by intrinsic physical limits such as the capacitance of water molecules and turbulence effects at pipe intersections.