Where is Internet data stored....? The computers and the growth of the Internet have allowed information to be duplicated, published and accessed by just about anybody. Anyone, who wants, can start a blog or a Web site, or share their perspectives on social networks (Twitter, Flickr, Orkut, Facebook etc). If its information you need, you can sit down in front of a computer and do a Google or Yahoo search and within seconds be presented with hundreds or even thousands of search results to weed through. However, have you ever looked beyond the neat, virtual representation of cyberspace on your screen? Have you ever consider for a while where the information is actually coming from or where it’s going? So where is the digital data stored? Facebook is the largest social networking Web site with 400 million active users worldwide, who share more than 25 billion pieces of content (posts, notes, photos, videos, news stories, Web-links etc) each month. You probably have experience it too. You must have customized your privacy settings at least once, as a natural impulse, to guard your information. But have you ever thought where the profiles are actually stored? Where do the uploaded data and multimedia go? The mystery of the Internet is not so difficult to understand. The World Wide Web and other services on Internet are actually controlled by the Web servers. Servers are, in fact, individual computers that hold data and let you surf the Internet. Joseph R. Dominick writes in “The Dynamics of Mass Communication” that the structure of the Web is based on the Web server, a computer connected to the Internet that allows the transfer of hypertext pages. One server can hold thousands of hypertext pages that combine to form a complete Web site. The servers are wired up to a broadband connection and linked to the outside world through fiber optic cables. The hardware part (hard drive) of a server is what houses the content, while the software part is what makes the content accessible through the Internet. So, when you create a profile on Facebook, the information is captured on the Facebook servers in the US. Whenever you update your status, post and comment on photos or videos or otherwise communicate with friends, these servers receive your actions, and then act quickly so that you see your actions completed in seconds. With around thirty-thousand servers, Facebook manages more than twenty-five thousand gigabytes of users’ data each data. Google is, by far, the biggest company in the cyberspace market with over 1 million servers supporting its operations across the world. Some servers are run by government agencies, some by universities and libraries, some by schools, some by businesses, and so on. All of the servers, operating in the world, are inter-connected and are able to communicate with one another and to their clients i.e. the Internet users. For this to work, however, the computers must speak a common language. The common language, that was developed for the Internet by computer programmers, is called TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. IP is sort of like an address on an envelope. It tells the computer where to send a particular message. Email is another feature of the Internet. It’s the most widely used resource over the Internet. As of 2011, the Royal Pingdom Web monitoring service estimated that there were 3.146 billion email accounts worldwide. Email works on client/server arrangement. To send and read emails, users (client) must access another computer (server), where their mailbox resides. Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, — all have their data centers housing the servers (super computers) in different parts of the world. Web servers may range from supercomputers to potato powered personal computers. Back in May 2000, Fredric White created a Web server powered by five potatoes. It managed to cope with 0.2 hits per second, taking roughly five seconds to process a single server request. The project was eventually abandoned as it was less stable and prone to physical and digital threats. During the day-to-day Internet use, we’re unable to control where our information is processed. We’re at the mercy of the services and the servers they have chosen. Our information might be strewn across a huge number of Web servers. This is the reason, trusted servers often ensure us with the messages like, “please note that your personal information will not be shared or distributed”. This is where trusted Web servers emphasize the safeguards that surround our information. While many servers are secure, countless others are exposed to security threats. The viruses, Trojans and online hacking intrusions, we encounter over the Internet, more or less all originate from insecure servers. Considering the tidal wave of insecurities, antivirus software programs like Norton, McAfee, ESET, AVG, Avast, etc, have been improvised for the Web servers. Now, it is upon the users to ensure that they are not being scammed. The Internet has become an integral part of our life. With around 555 million Web sites and 2.1 billion users worldwide (December 2011), the Internet has evolved into a place where people meet, love, hate, shop and strive for better online presence. There is every reason to think that the Internet, by any measure, will keep growing. As we put more of our personal as well as professional lives online, we will come to rely on the Internet in ways we could hardly imagine before. For better or worse, the Internet is now a critical component in almost everything we do. As the cyberspace expands and services continue to develop apace, more and more computers will be needed to house the data we’re all creating.
Posted on: Mon, 19 May 2014 17:06:56 +0000
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