Architecture for the Internet

Adapted from Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure, available now from Melville House.

Sometimes people who want to learn about seeing Internet infrastructure ask me to tell them “where the Internet lives.” At first glance, this seems like a bit of a misnomer—the Internet isn’t a static object, it’s defined by the constant movement of information. It doesn’t “live” anywhere; it’s already everywhere at once—it “lives” in the library down the street, in office buildings, in undersea cables. But there are a few specific types of buildings that hold crucial pieces of Internet infrastructure—less homes for the Internet than waystations that data traffics through. Below, we’ll look at a “carrier hotel,” one of a number of buildings where different ISPs and network companies “check in” with one another.