Where is the internet located?

Question

Now before you are too quick to reply with the obvious, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND that the internet is literally millions of networked computers and there isn't one computer that is some kind of internet master computer.....REALLY, I get that. A few years ago, I happened to catch 20/20 or Dateline where they showed the viewers these enormous supercomputers underground and they told us that this is where the internet is located and even made reference to monitoring content and viruses and stuff. Where are these huge supercomputers? Is there really a main internet gateway of these supercomputers? Offer a link if you can.

And there it is...two guys telling me that the internet is a network of many computers not located in one particular place. Thanks for reading the question more thoroughly.

Answer 1

I think this is more in line of what you were looking for

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

Answer 2

I asked my brother the same question one time. He and three friends run a computer software writing company in Ottawa. I said, " Where is the Internet ? " Well, he couldn't think of an answer that made any sense. If you stop and think logically about it, the Internet is not some gigantic super computer some where that has all the websites in the world in it. How unbelieveable is that ? How many websites must there be in the entire world ? There is just no way they all could be on huge computers . Here is the way I think of it. Think of a simple telephone. When you want to talk to someone, you dial their "phone number". The signal goes through land line wires to the phone you called, and it rings, letting those folks know someone wants to talk to them. When that person hits "Talk" on his phone, he is opening the connection to allow the call into the receiver of the phone. Now, think of your basic PC.
You want to contact a certain website( just like you wanted to phone a guy like I just said) How do you connect with that website ? With a phone, you used a "phone number", whereas with a PC, you use what we call a " URL ". Those URLs are too long to remember, so we use something shorter, like (example) Wikipedia.com . We type that into a search engine, hit search, the signal goes through land line wires to the computer that has the matching URL, the connection is opened up, the website pops up on your screen. I think , if I had a website, it would be somewhere in my own computer, and for you to access it, you simply use the right .com, or .net, or whatever to get through. So, in my simplistic mind, a computer is merely a glorified phone, except instead of CALLER ID, like the phone, we have a monitor screen as a display.
The first home computers all used " dial-up" through the phone lines. Some still do. Email addresses are just taking the place of the old phonenumber. That is my answer.

Answer 3

The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.To put it simply? The INTERNET is everywhere, not just in a single location Cheers

Answer 4

The internet is like God: it's everywhere. More precisely, it's decentralized and made up of thousands of computers all over the place.

The big super-computers that you probably saw were for the NSA. Those are in Maryland, and yes, they monitor a lot of email and other content.

Answer 5

think the closest thing to what your thinking about would be the core routers
i know you said you understood the internet is just a bunch of networks put together, and id like to think there was something more to just that too, but theres really not.
its all brought together through the core routers, which is guess you could say is the "base level" of the internet, all running eigrp and only few ppl have access and the ability to modify/touch them

Answer 6

Some Verizon place in Virginia, I believe. One of my professors was talking about it.