How heavy is the Internet?

By Chris Stevens .

Using publicly available information, for the first time in the world, 
we have precisely and scientifically calculated the weight of the 
Internet. Obviously this information is only really useful to someone 
attempting to work out the cost of posting the Internet somewhere, 
perhaps to North Korea. Still, the casual reader -- hi there! -- may 
still enjoy learning just how damn heavy the thing is.

Around 570,937,778 computers are believed to be connected to the 
Internet, according to the Internet Systems Consortium. That's an awful 
lot of heavy hardware jacked into the idiot pipes. In fact, at an 
average of around 40kg per machine, including your monitor, it all adds 
up to a staggering mound of electronics. Obviously some of these 
machines are laptops. Many desktop machines will have printers or 
scanners plugged into them though, offsetting the difference.

Servers are the place where all your 'Internet' is stored. Picture them 
as electronic lending libraries, only your book is never on loan, or 
smeared in sick. Instead, servers serve up the pages you ask for when 
you type those addresses into your browser window. As you can see, 
there's a fair number of them. Netcraft estimates there are 175,480,931 
servers worldwide.

more...
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49304012,00.htm
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