What is the business model of the Internet's backbone infrastructure?

Question

For example, when I access Yahoo!, there is a connection between my home and my IPS, which I pay for, called the "last mile". My IPS probably pays some larger company to gain access to the Net, but from there on, the packets can go any route all away acrross thousands of miles to CA, USA. Most of the distance is covered through very expensive backbone connections (that connect cities, countries and continents together). Due to TCP's characteristics, there is no way of controlling what backbone my packets will be using, much less (I imagine) billing for it. So who pays for this investment?

Answer 1

A lot of the backbone is paid for by big companys but since 9/11 the U.S. government is taking a big role in the root 13 servers.
Some of the main developers are company's like Verisign and google.
Mostly for security reasons but I would imagine that a lot of our taxpayer money goes to the development.
Here are some links for more reading:
https://ssl.cpsr.org/pipermail/governance/2004-January/000686.html
http://www.root-servers.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=4009568&p1=01%7C%7C%7C%7C004

Answer 2

I guess you need to learn about the Internet Cloud. There's virtual space through which your packets travel. That's why it's so fast.

The only hard wired things here are the connections to the radius server and you and the same on the other end.

While all ISPs need to lease their lines from the Governments, the actual input into the "infrastructure" isn't really big. They're anyway making a killing from your local calls and Cell Phones and what they get out of the Internet, though it might seem like little drops of water, they sure make one helluva ocean!

So, bottom line is, you pay for all this!? From your taxes. From your subscriptions. From the Advertising revenue you generate by visiting a site, that gets taxed.

All the best.

Answer 3

2000 model was rent a room file it full of comptuers and servers use a web design program and design the page invest 10,000 US and then when it gets big sell it for like 300 a share.

Wo those were the dark days.

Answer 4

Sounds like you are relatively comfortable computer talk. Sure you're not a specialist? Anyway, not sure if this is what you are asking, but this is what I found from ask.com