Where Is the Internet Located? Inside Its Physical Layers

Quick Answer: The Internet Is Everywhere

The internet has no single address. It is a worldwide mesh of cables, data centres, exchange points, and end devices that all speak the same protocol (TCP/IP). No company, country, or building owns it. If you want to point at it, point at three things: the cables under the sea, the data centres on land, and the phone in your hand.

The Three Physical Layers of the Internet

Every byte you load travels through three layers of hardware:

1. Transport — submarine fibre cables, terrestrial fibre, mobile towers, and satellites.
2. Storage and compute — data centres and cloud regions that hold the websites, apps, and AI models you use.
3. Edge — the routers, modems, phones, and laptops that put you on the network.

Strip any layer away and the internet stops working in that place.

Submarine Cables: The Backbone

About 99% of intercontinental internet traffic moves through fibre-optic cables on the ocean floor. TeleGeography counts roughly 570 in-service cable systems and 1,712 landing points on its 2025 Submarine Cable Map, with another 81 systems planned and over $13 billion in new cable investment booked through 2027.

The cables are laid by specialised ships. Each strand is about as thick as a garden hose, armoured against fishing trawlers and shark bites near shore, and thinner in deep water. They carry data as pulses of light at speeds measured in terabits per second.

Major hubs where many cables meet include New York/New Jersey, Cornwall (UK), Marseille, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Mumbai. Cut a few of these and large parts of the global internet slow down — which is exactly what happened to West Africa in March 2024 when four cables broke at once off Côte d’Ivoire.

Data Centres and Cloud Regions

A data centre is a warehouse full of servers, cooling, and backup power. The biggest are called hyperscale facilities — Synergy Research Group put the global count at 1,189 hyperscale data centres in early 2025, with another 504 in build or planning. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google operate most of them.

Cloud regions are clusters of data centres in one geographic area. AWS runs 36 regions, Microsoft Azure runs more than 60, and Google Cloud runs 41. When you open Instagram, Netflix, or ChatGPT, your request hits the nearest region, not a single mythical “headquarters of the internet.”

The United States holds about 54% of global hyperscale capacity. The rest is spread across Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Japan, India, Brazil, and increasingly South Africa and Nigeria.

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)

An IXP is a neutral building where different networks meet to swap traffic directly instead of paying a third party to carry it. This makes the internet faster and cheaper.

Big IXPs include DE-CIX (Frankfurt), AMS-IX (Amsterdam), LINX (London), and Equinix Ashburn (Virginia). Africa’s largest is IXPN in Lagos, which keeps Nigerian-to-Nigerian traffic inside Nigeria instead of routing it through Europe.

DNS Root Servers

When you type awajis.com, your computer needs to find the right server. The lookup starts at the 13 logical root DNS servers, named A through M. There are only 13 logical names, but they are backed by roughly 1,900 physical servers spread across 130+ countries using a routing trick called anycast. Your request hits the closest copy.

The root servers are operated by 12 independent organisations, including Verisign, ICANN, NASA, the US Army Research Lab, and the University of Maryland. No single body controls them.

Where Nigeria Connects

Lagos is West Africa’s main internet on-ramp. The cables landing there now include:

• SAT-3/WASC — lit 2002, connects to Europe and Asia.
• Glo-1 — Globacom’s cable, lit 2010.
• MainOne — lit 2010, now operated by Equinix.
• WACS (West Africa Cable System) — lit 2012.
• ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) — lit 2012.
• Equiano — Google’s cable, landed in Lagos April 2022, lands at the OADC station.
• 2Africa — Meta-led, the world’s longest subsea cable. Landed in Lekki in February 2024, with the core system activated in November 2025.

The data centres these cables feed include Equinix MDXi in Lekki (formerly MainOne), Rack Centre in Ikeja, and OADC Lagos. MTN’s Dabengwa data centre is the country’s largest commercial facility.

Who Owns the Internet?

No one. The internet is a voluntary agreement between thousands of independent networks (called Autonomous Systems) to exchange traffic using shared protocols. Standards are set by open bodies like the IETF and ICANN. Cables are owned by consortia of telecoms and tech firms. Data centres are private. Your home router is yours.

This decentralisation is why the internet keeps working when one cable breaks, one company fails, or one country pulls the plug.

FAQs

Is the internet stored in the cloud?

The “cloud” is just other people’s data centres. Your photos, emails, and documents sit on physical hard drives in specific buildings — usually several, copied for safety.

How fast does data travel through submarine cables?

Light moves through fibre at about two-thirds the speed of light in a vacuum. A signal from London to New York takes around 30 milliseconds.

What happens if a submarine cable is cut?

Traffic reroutes through other cables automatically. Repair ships then fish up the broken cable, splice it, and lower it back. A typical repair takes one to four weeks.

How many people use the internet?

The ITU estimated 5.5 billion users at the end of 2024 — about 68% of the world’s population.

Does the internet work without satellites?

Mostly, yes. Satellites carry under 1% of long-haul traffic. Starlink, OneWeb, and Project Kuiper are growing fast for remote and mobile users, but the heavy lifting still happens in undersea fibre.

Can a country be cut off from the internet?

Yes. Governments can order ISPs to shut down, block specific sites, or cut external links. Egypt did this in 2011, and several countries have done it since.

Where is the “centre” of the internet?

There isn’t one. The closest you get is a handful of carrier hotels — buildings like 60 Hudson Street in Manhattan, Equinix Ashburn in Virginia, and Telehouse North in London — where many networks physically meet.

Who pays for the internet?

Everyone who uses it. End users pay ISPs. ISPs pay backbone providers and IXP fees. Content companies pay for cloud hosting. Cable consortia split the cost of laying new fibre.

The internet has no postcode — it is the wires under your feet, the warehouses near power plants, and the device in your hand, all talking at once.