Uncovering the physical reality of the Internet

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Welcome back but we also emails and photos every -- -- that information -- just floating around out there in cyberspace the data is actually stored in transmitted through the inner workings of the Internet joining us how to explain is Andrew -- he's the author of the new book.

-- is out now nice to see you Andrew good -- And -- you said about him to write a book about the Internet because it's not this thing -- lives out in the ether somewhere you were sitting in your house when -- Internet went down because of a squirrel.

Yeah I mean our Internet breaks occasionally in the guy can the next day -- -- you know looked around in the back of our building and said.

I think a squirrel is chewing on your Internet -- -- became obsessed with wedeman and if a squirrel can knock down my Internet then.

What is this Internet thing that we rely on every day where does it go when I sending email is a wind up in Nebraska somewhere before it goes off to Canada.

Essentially what I did was then followed the wire.

And what I found is that -- surprisingly few places where the networks of the Internet connect to each other.

One of the things that's really fascinating is this beach manhole we think of the way in which we connect to the Internet maybe it goes up to a satellite somewhere but really.

It's here it's under the -- and we actually connect -- look at the screen folks at home.

What is this what we looking at here that is -- manhole on a beach near Lisbon Portugal.

And this is the place where -- 5000 mile undersea cable that goes down the western coast of Africa -- this is the spot where it connects to the constant.

And underneath all of this these cables connect we send an email and -- goes off through servers or or data centers in some part of the world and it's routed back isn't it.

Yeah I mean date we -- it seeking to give it almost like -- like air travel.

You're always traveling -- these major hubs when you're going international Indians and it's the same way it passes there are surprisingly small list of buildings.

FaceBook this week had a pretty big outage for a few hours having the other night and -- mayor barely measured a blip on the Internet radar when a massive company like FaceBook goes down it barely mentions a blip what does that say about the size of the Internet.

There's a lot of it it's the idea we're we're online all the time but the thing that always amazed me was that if there's always a physical pat.

You know it's always about following the ground somewhere to get from media.

You spent three years writing this book what was the most surprising thing you discovered about the Internet -- time.

I think what I what I never got over it was both how team in the construction what's you know that you would think that it -- -- millions of people who made it every day.

But in fact there were a small number of network engineers who -- really involved in the heart of it.

Negotiating the connections between networks with each other it doesn't happen automatically they have to trust each other they have to establish each link individually.

The book has just broken the top 100 on Amazon let's make it a top 10 -- this morning to book -- tubes the authors and blown from.

WIRED Magazine great to see you and your pace and thank you.

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Uncovering the physical reality of the Internet

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