What is the weight of the Internet?

sandeep Dec 7, 2012 · 4 min read

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Calculating the weight of the Internet

An interesting questions asked of all times is what is the weight of the internet? Did you ever try answering that question by yourself? – its mind boggling! Today, we are going to calculate the weight including the weights involved in the delivery of Internet i.e the equipment used to deliver the internet to the world. We are also going to calculate the weight of the internet with just the information alone.

If you are wondering if it is even possible to calculate the later then you should know that the information on the internet is stored in bits at the smallest unit. This form is in binary code (you probably already know this) we dig deeper into this below in the second part. The Binary code is not just mathematical it is also tangible. The 1′s and 0′s are are embodied and manipulated as voltages in electronic circuits which are of coarse electrons which obviously have mass.

This makes calculating the weight of the information on the internet possible as every bit of data has mass even though its ridiculously minuscule, it does exist.

The Internet Archive stores over 85 billion pages. Just to make it easier for you to be able to relate to the numbers we will use relative examples. But first numbers involving the delivery systems in the weight of the internet.

Quick Stats and weights :-

Around 570,937,778 computers are believed to be connected to the Internet. Weighing 22,837,511,120 kg including desktops, monitors and laptops.
RIM sold 50 million Blackberries that weigh 6,800,000 kg
Apple sold 42 million i Phones that weigh 6,075,000 kg
There are 175,480,931 estimated servers worldwide. (Servers are the place where all your ‘Internet’ is stored) This weighs up to 1,754,809,310 kg
All the cables which weigh over 87,000,000 kg The cable weighs 5.8kg per meter
There are quite a lot of websites which weigh 0.01 kg
There are over 287,524 viruses adding to the weight of the internet.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen!

The delivery system of the Internet is very heavy indeed

The Grand total is over 498,438,559,990 kg

To give you some idea of just how heavy the delivery system of the internet really is, imagine an absolutely enormous tower of computers and servers and cables reaching up into the sky like the evil fingers of some apocalyptic demon. Now imagine sparks, thunder, electrical storms. That is the closest you can come to visualizing the Internet. Stats source

What is the weight of the Internet Information alone ?

All types of information on the web is taken into consideration measuring the weight of the internet including the videos, pictures, blogs, articles, e mails, web sites, documents, Web pages, everything that streams as binary digits, 1s and 0s. These digits are mathematical entities, but they are also tangible ones. They are embodied and manipulated as voltages in electric circuits as mentioned earlier.

Despite what the actual answer may be at any given time, and that it is ultimately of little significance (for now, at least; try back in a trillion years or so), the fact that the Internet actually weighs anything at all is still a fascinating thing to consider!

How is the weight of the Internet Information Calculated?

If we can work out the weight of the bits associated with a piece of information when it is assembled in a computer’s memory, we are halfway to figuring out the weight of the Internet. An E mail contains 8 Billion electrons of information in it assuming its 50 kb in size. Since we know the mass of the electrons we can calculate the weight of the internet.

The information on the entire internet weighs 50 grams or the weight of a strawberry. The weight of the Internet (information alone) is ridiculously minuscule given to its size. As Micheal from Vsauce explains in the video.

Eric E. Schmidt the executive chairman of Google from 2001 to 2011 estimated that out of the 5 million terabytes of information (which is doubling every 5 years) that is on the internet Google has only indexed 0.004%

A statistically rough ( one sigma) estimate might be 75-100 million servers @ ~350-550 watts each.. Call it Forty Billion Watts or ~ 40 GW. Since silicon logic runs at three volts or so, and an Ampere is some ten to the eighteenth electrons a second, if the average chip runs at a Gigaherz , straightforward calculation reveals that some 50 grams of electrons in motion make up the Internet. source

What is the weight of the Internet ?

Excluding the energy it takes to delivery the internet all the information collectively weighs only 0.2 millionths of an ounce to be the final answer as the weight of the internet.