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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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.
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