Where/how does the internet exist?

Places like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have dozens, if not more, super computers dedicated to the sole purpose of storing information that is turned into web pages.

something like a 403 error, server down, means that somewhere the computer, anywhere from one of Google's super computers to a home desktop, with the information for the page is disconnected, malfunctioning, or without power.

My computer teacher has a few networks setup at my school, it is just a desktop in the corner.

Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s, commissioned by the United States government in collaboration with private commercial interests to build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks. The funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks. The commercialization of what was by the 1990s an international network resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population used the services of the Internet.

This is very complex to answer. In general, Internet was a USA military project in the beginning. Then went accessed by universities and finally a public domain. Internet will never crash because different servers duplicate its functionality to prevent the network from global crash. I watch your back, he watches mine, I also watch his back, you watch his back too and so on. See this movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4

It explains it in very nice form.

Ask Al Gore

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