Could Kim Kardashian's bottom actually break the internet?
Yet dozens of glazed doughnut memes and Photoshopped bottoms
later, the internet is still working.
But it got us thinking: would it be possible to destroy the
internet?
It would certainly be hard. The internet is made up of lots
and lots of networks which allows data to be sent from computer to computer.
In order for data to get from one computer to another, it is
broken up into small chunks (packet data) and then is passed, so quickly it
appears to be almost instant, between machines around the world.
Routers, like the one you might have in your living room,
help direct this data from your computer to a web server, which stores
information and helps direct it back to you.
'Like a spider's web'
"The internet is like a spider's web: there are many
ways of getting across it," says Gary Thornton, the data centre
spokesperson for the UK IT Association.
He told Newsbeat: "You can shut down one of the routes
but there are many alternate ways of getting across.
"If one route got damaged it could be expensive to
repair. There may be some localised interruption and things might take a bit
longer but that is it, the internet will carry on.
Kim Kardashian has been trending on Twitter for almost three
days
"The internet was designed right from the start to be
secure and robust.
"It was first developed during the days of the Cold
War, in the days of US paranoia, so everything has multiple redundancies.
"Everything at the core of the internet was designed
with an alternate way of working."
Did Kim #BreakTheInternet? Of course she didn't
Professor Ian Brown is associate director of Oxford
University's cyber-security centre.
He said if Kim wanted to break the internet she should at
least have chosen a 10-minute video to do it, because it would take up more
bandwidth.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can flow down a given
wire or internet connection at a time.
However, he said that even then, she would be unlikely to
"break the internet".
Kim's famous behind
"The internet is distributed so it has components all
over the world," he said.
"It's not like there is one central node [a connection
point] that is going to be overloaded.
Sharks v Kim
"There are millions of servers and cables, so even if
some of the high bandwidth cables are broken - which can happen, for example,
if a ship's anchor hits them - all that happens is that the data gets routed
around the problem.
"The internet might go a little bit slower but most
people wouldn't notice."
Lots of fibre optic internet cables travel under the sea.
That's why in August, one of Google's product managers said the firm was
reinforcing cables to protect them from shark bites.
So while sharks may prove a problem, Kim won't.
More of a threat to the internet than Kim (but even then,
minimal)
But if shutting down the internet is so hard, how do
authoritarian governments stop people from using it?
Professor Brown says one way these governments control the
internet is by "telling the big telephone companies, which usually run the
very high bandwidth internet connections, to shut off the national connections
from the rest of the internet".
There are problems with this too.
Often there will be ways information can still flow, either
through cables or satellite links or radio links.
That's one of the reasons the internet is now the main way
we communicate, according to Brown, because it's "very flexible and
robust".
Is this what the internet would look like if Kim had her
way? Of course it isn't
One time the internet did slow down was in 2001 after the
9/11 terror attacks. Professor Brown explained why.
"Occasionally in a specific geographical area on a
specific set of links, if there's a huge news event, there is some congestion
or slowing down," he said.
"It happened particularly during 9/11 because that's
where a specific set of cables between America and Europe came in to the United
States.
"On that day there was some congestion because everyone
around the world was looking for news from the US to see what was happening.
"They were looking for video which takes up a lot more
bandwidth than photographs and web pages.
"That combination of huge demand and temporarily
reduced capacity did cause some congestion but certainly it didn't shut down
the internet."
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