Just how big is the Internet?

Have you ever wondered how big the internet really is?

It's a question that's been confounding me for quite a while now. Quite the mind blower!

Whilst it may be impossible to answer that question realistically, there are a few sources that can give good estimates as to the amount of information and the number of internet users active:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d78ba8d31216.jpg[/atsimg]

THE internet has permeated everything from buying to banking to bonking.

But just how big is it?

Microsoft's Bing team puts the amount of web pages at "over one trillion".

And Google has already indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses.

There are more addresses than there are people on Earth. The current global population stands at more than 6.7 billion.

That means there are about 150 web addresses per person in the world.

Translated: If you spent just one minute reading every website in existence, you’d be kept busy for 31,000 years. Without any sleep.

Source

If anyone can give anymore insight into this perplexing modern conundrum, they'd be very well appreciated!

~Hughness

Yeah, and of those one trillion pages, 99.99999999999999% are garbage. Now that's a lot of trash.

Actually, it's just occurred to me that pretty much any data found on the topic will go out of date very very quickly..!

It would be interesting however to get an estimate of the size of data too, but again that would be out of date pretty quickly...

And what about that old question of how long it could be until the internet becomes self aware and is able to self regulate? If that were at all possible..

2 flags and 1 response?

Awww... can we have some audience participation?

Originally posted by purehughness
2 flags and 1 response?

Awww... can we have some audience participation?

Once higher order structure arises, then the number could be infinite.

reply to post by xelamental


Though a fairly oblique answer, I can see what you're getting at there..

So you reckon the internet could well be infinite?

Maybe by definition it already is... Something that interconnects things to itself, whilst constantly growing all the time could be considered infinite..

Damn the metaphysical nature of the internet!

I don't believe the internet is infinite. After all, it may be virtual, but it is constrained by a finite amount of resources to produce it (albeit very large). It is larger then any human being could envision, but to say it is infinite? Naaah.

Now, take into account not just websites, but the other portions of the internet. Cell phones have IP addresses, cable boxes (some even have 2), the thousands of internal IPs each larger corporation has to make the public ones last as long as they have.

The internet is a lot larger then just a trillion website pages. There is more to it then the WWW.

That is what makes it so cool.

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Originally posted by SHNIPE
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Originally posted by purehughness
2 flags and 1 response?

Awww... can we have some audience participation?

I flagged you
Now in the year 2028, apparently we'll be equal to the power of the machine.
Man and machine will be on a par.
In the future, we'll be able to download our minds and live in the cyber world.
Is this dangerous for mankinds survival ??
Divided opinion exists on this.

Just remembered this video!
Says a lot about the potential of the internet!



Thanks go out to karlhungis for posting it a while back!

Originally posted by uk today

I flagged you

Now in the year 2028, apparently we'll be equal to the power of the machine.
Man and machine will be on a par.
In the future, we'll be able to download our minds and live in the cyber world.
Is this dangerous for mankinds survival ??
Divided opinion exists on this.

Nice. Although according to the video I just posted, that could be as soon as 2013!

And that by 2050, there will be computers available to buy that have a processing power greater than that of the population of earth!

I wouldn't mind living in a 'Ghost in the Shell' sort of reality.. Could be real interesting! Yet potentially very damaging!

reply to post by purehughness


I saw an " Horizon " documentary on The Singularity which really made me think. They stated it would happen around 2028, but with the speed that technology is advancing , it really would'nt suprise me if it did happen sooner.

I personally would love to give it a go, and live entirely in a cyber-state.

reply to post by uk today


Horizon always has amazing topics

What you said about cyber-states is pretty cool. Like imagine if we had a cybernetically augmented brain, through which we could access the net without the need for a computer screen.. It would just be part of your vision..

Could the future of the internet lie there? In like a 'trans-human' world?

Originally posted by SphinxMontreal
Yeah, and of those one trillion pages, 99.99999999999999% are garbage. Now that's a lot of trash.

GARBAGE!?!

One man's garbage is another man's porn.

I almost think the real question isn't how big is it? but what is the internet? I mean it's a way of connecting people to people to share information right? but what is it really? not to sound crazy but its almost like it exists elsewhere at times lol

reply to post by Awolscout


Doesn't sound crazy at all. That was part of my train of thought when starting the thread, like how would you best quantify the internet?

Number of users?
Number of Terabytes of information?

It's hard to do because the internet in esscence is almost like the culmination of thoughts being connected..

To truly define the internet, and what, where and when it is... bit of a mind blower...

reply to post by purehughness


I like to think of the internet as a living constantly evolving entity.

The consciousness of the entire planet accessible with a keyboard and a screen.

reply to post by lucentenigma


I like it.

The human race's consciousness given form...

And access to people's past thoughts, like our memories as data..

Cheers!

Originally posted by purehughness

THE internet has permeated everything from buying to banking to bonking.

But just how big is it?

Microsoft's Bing team puts the amount of web pages at "over one trillion".

And Google has already indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses.

There are more addresses than there are people on Earth. The current global population stands at more than 6.7 billion.

That means there are about 150 web addresses per person in the world.

One thing nobody mentioned is that we are running out of internet addresses on IPv4. I suppose a few have switched to IPv6 which has more addresses but not many.
Some of the differences are outlined here:
www.techsutram.com...

and explained here:



One important difference is that IPv6 has 10 billion billion billion times as many addresses as IPv4 so it will take a while to run out of addresses with IPv6!!!