I’m trying to delete pictures to clear up space to download ios updates and it has me thinking, how is the internet not out of storage if there’s so much random stuff out there?
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The internet isn’t’ centralized – it is a network of independent computers and servers all connected to one another through common infrastructure. Think of it like a city – the roads (the internet) connects your home (your computer/phone) to various businesses (websites).
It doesn’t run out of storage for the same reason we never run out of new stores in the city – we can just build a new store (connect a new computer to the internet).
There are *huge* server banks in unassuming warehouses all over the world that act as storage and traffic handling for the vast amount of data we generate.
New ones are being added all the time, and existing ones are frequently updated to more modern hardware.
I work next to one of them, you’d never know driving by that the building is just server racks on the inside. It’s a drab grey building with some corporate logo about information services on the door
Here’s an [excellent video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vywf48Dhyns&t=105s) about The Internet.
‘The Internet’ is used to describe a network of connections between computers. Using Reddit as an example, Reddit has several computers that run the programs that make Reddit and store all the information. We call computers that specialize in this sort of thing a server. While you might have just one computer/phone, most companies don’t use just one server, and you can think of it like a chain of stores. Let’s say you want to get something from Starbucks. Chances are, there are many ways for you to get to your closest Starbucks, and if that one is busy or closed there are others around you can use instead. Back to the Reddit example, Reddit has many servers and Reddit handles which server you connect with and you don’t have to worry about all that, but just know that it’s a thing that happens.
On an individual computer/server basis, it is possible to run out of storage. The reason this doesn’t happen is that companies are pretty much constantly expanding their server capacities and building more servers to store all the information, and they usually do this by building a new building and filling it with computers. There are a lot of these buildings where I live.
First of all, when you say the internet are you talking about the structures or the service?
Because there are two internet people tend to obfuscate when having this discussion.
The Internet or the structure or what I like to call it “another universe” is infinite just like our reality.
We can talk about the service and how we use servers to contain to collect the data and we move around in the internet to go from one location to another.
The internet topic is so fascinating because we really don’t understand what it truly is and what are the limits around it.
My theory is that the internet is another universe. I see 0s and 1s as an alternative building block like our DNA/RNA. The day we are able to use 0s and 1s to create an actual Sentient AI is the day that my theory is true. We are getting there. I don’t know how we humans where able to cross over such another dimension (Internet) with the tools we have. It is crazy. The internet of today isn’t the same one we used 20/30 years ago. We have broken so many ceilings and theories and we are still doing it today. It is awesome.
Some people imagine the internet as one big box filled with stuff. That’s a misunderstanding.
A better way to think of it is the internet is a series of boxes all connected to one another through “cords” (networks). Networks are the way separate computers are connected together to exchange data. If you have 3 computers in your house and they all share information to one another, they are all on the same Network.
**This principle is how the internet works (in a very simple sense)**
[**If you saw a visualization of the internet**](https://media.kasperskydaily.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/92/2015/11/06023824/internet-map-FB.jpg) what you’d see is a series of wires stretched and interconnected between one another like a web. Through this web, you are able to request access to information stored on computers and services across every edge of the web you have access to.
**This gets to your question about storage and data.**
Data management is an entire industry. A company will have literal buildings dedicated to the storage of data and the cooling of the equipment that it contains to manage that data. While some very large companies have the ability to manage their own servers, most companies and people use web hosting services owned by big tech companies. Examples being Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. They all have their own data centers throughout the world.
[**Here’s an example of Microsoft’s data center in Chicago. It’s an enormous facility.**](https://www.cnet.com/pictures/photos-inside-a-microsoft-data-center/4/)
When you upload a picture or a video to a website or web service, that data is stored on a server somewhere. Companies spend millions managing this data and ensuring everything runs correctly.
In the event a data center is beginning to run out of space, they add more servers in to meet demand. You can always add in more servers but the issue is data centers require huge amounts of energy so a facility needs to be specially designed to handle that energy requirement and to effectively cool those servers.
Because it costs so much money to cool these data centers, [**Microsoft created a program where they put data servers inside of specialized pods and sink them under the ocean.**](https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/) These deep water data centers are cooled by the temperatures of the ocean which help cut the costs associated with cooling.
“the internet” isn’t a single thing. It is a network of networked networks – a whole bunch of computers connected and talking with each other.
It is definitely possible to run a website or FTP site from your home computer, but the vast majority of the internet and world wide web especially is run from servers – giant computers with special hard drives that take up entire rooms.
If an individual site needs more storage, they will pay their web hosts for more
There are huge data centers all over the world, just buildings full of racks of thousands of servers and disk drives. Some disk enclosures hold 100+ 20-terabyte drives, and there will be hundreds of such enclosures.
The internet is a vast worldwide collection of servers that host data. When you search via google, you are basically searching catalogs of all the data on those servers that are made available by the users or companies that own them. They are physical devices and their storage is monitored. As the companies need to add more drives or servers, they do it to accommodate data growth.
People just keep buying more hardrives and plugging them into the internet. Last I checked the NSA has enough storage to store 3 days of all phone calls. Google has even more storage.
It’s spread out, but in the end it’s just a bunch of hard drives.
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