Unfortunately, the same technique does not work for natural gas pipelines. Gas molecules allow very little ultrasound energy to get through to the walls. This made it possible to see the signal bounce back from inside the pipeline wall. Curiously, that is the dilemma faced by companies that want to develop advanced products and services for the Internet. The Internet is simply unpredictable.
Traffic can be light or heavy.
Critical packets of information sent over the network can get lost or arrive out of order. The sheer unpredictability of the network makes it difficult to develop sophisticated new Internet technologies that will do well in every conceivable type of Internet weather. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have made it easier for the Internet industry to meet these challenges by developing a software tool that allows engineers to test their products under a wide variety of artificial Internet weather conditions. Many companies and universities are using the first version of NIST Net to test everything from business applications to Internet games. A new version of NIST Net that will support finer, more sophisticated testing scenarios, will be released in March.