Who owns the physical Internet and where is it?

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I propose to examine the data centres, physical connectivity, route servers, infrastructure that is the internet, using location, ownership, real time access statistics, long term trends and future scenarios; mining public databases, property transactions and traffic reports to build a real time model of the Internet.The Internet ('it') as a 'Thing' is now part of everyday life, used by consumers, governments, experts/ specialists alike. It's something tangible yet sacred, modern yet fixed (and unchangeable), worth trusting yet constantly misunderstood and feared. 'It' is regularly studied, yet unknown. 'It' needs serious examination.On paper, the Internet is simple: Computer devices (PCs/mobile phones/ servers/ sensors, etc.) are attached to a worldwide network of physical cables, connected with varying degrees of sophistication/ difficulty, interlinked with 'agreements' about how and where to route data sent on these cables to these devices. Humans use, or (rarely) programme these devices; as end users, providers or operators of services. This has not changed in decades. The Internet's early systems and public sector, well-designed protocols were built to last, and they did.'It' underpins transactions in many sectors (military, banking, business, commerce, academia, government, communication via email and VOIP, consumer retail, travel, media consumption and distribution, HR recruitment and company expansion) and, more importantly, all transactions in most new sectors/ regions.Much time and effort go into studies of its 'governance', security, retail price to 'use' it (for consumers), cost and reliability ('5 9s') for providers offering services 'on' it, its 'interoperability' and 'standards' (between such disparate players as DPRK, US or India, the North and South Pole stations, space vehicles and undersea machines) whilst little to no attention is paid to the materials that make up the Internet itself, or its geography and ownership.The Internet is - almost uniquely in history - a physical thing, used constantly, by billions of people, whose material location(s), ownership, and rules are unknown (and yet not 'secret') - it just is. But where and what is it? Almost all of the research, knowledge and facts about its material existence is in of one of three areas:1. Being "on the Internet" (e.g. cost as a home user of an ISP, or a mobile user, or more rarely as someone whose business has 'an Internet presence' somewhere else, e.g. updating a blog)2. Paying for a commodity/ utility/luxury sent via the Internet (e.g. a book, or Netflix, or a 'cloud' service)3. The cost and value of employing labour to work 'on the Internet' - e.g. a new business with a websiteKnowledge of the ownership of the Internet itself (as productive labour/ constant capital) the actual cables and server rooms that make up the global Internet, the workers who operate them, install them, and upgrade/ censor/ monitor/fix or remove them remains unknown, is dismissed as 'techie' or is viewed as a natural law. What is it? Where is it? Who owns and controls it?This topic will be addressed in 3 stages:1. State of the art literature review, existing systems analysis and expert discussion - what data is currently available to begin building a picture of the current Internet?2. Toolchain building and data source examination- what data sources can be connected, scraped, created, in order to make this picture richer?3. Front end, societal and economic analysis - what can be deduced, inferred or claimed from this richer picture?To be updated by end of 2023