can the size of the whole internet be calculated?

Question

can the internet be calculated ect in GB, or goin further up the scale TB (tera bytes) and does the entire internet get backed up by microsoft?

when you send a file to your email inbox at yahoo or you upload vidoes to a website that data gets stored on a sever or hdd, ect if you combine all the servers and online storage units that store this sort of data how big (eg in GB giga bytes) would all that data ammount to

Answer 1

The internet is a network, and sites connect and disconnect every minute. There is no way to take a "snapshot" of anything this big.

Individual web server administrators arrange for the backups of their server, if they are smart. Nobody else, not even Microsoft is going to back up their server for them.

Answer 2

Generally we measure the Internet's virtual-size by the number of computers connected to it, both based on data from network (like if u use TCP/IP or UDP, u know it depends). If we focus on the sizes of networks and the traffic they carry, it's noticed that since the Internet is a loose collection of networks, it is hard to decide what to include in estimating its size.

But here u've asked what's the size of whole internet, the answer is nobody knows it ...the number of hosts is indeed only an indication of the actual size of the Internet. Going from "number of hosts" to "number of users" is equivalent to taking a satellite picture of a city, counting the number of houses and buildings and guessing the number of inhabitants, which is not exactly a very precise process. The host number is on the other hand the only number which can be easily obtained. It allows us to gauge the growth of the network. In fact, raging arguments have been exchanged on the "size of the Internet" issue.

Now from a site :http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/internet.htm I've got some data on size of internet, that's I'm giving u here, I don't know about the authenticity of statistics. Anyways, just take a look at it :


The size of the Internet in terabytes :

Medium 2002 Terabytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Surface Web -> 167
Deep Web -> 91,850
Email (originals) -> 440,606
Instant messaging -> 274

TOTAL = 532,897

Answer 3

Nope, and even if it could be "backed up" I dont think the backup would ever finish!! The internet is growing rapidly every single second.

Answer 4

the internet has no real physical dimensions. It's a virtual world

Answer 5

if it could someone would have already done so. then they would have a page up saying the web is 233 quadraquadzillion zerabytes or so

Answer 6

no that would be like calculating the size of outerspace

Answer 7

no