In a minimum of one aspect, central Ohio is the facility of the Internet universe.
More Internet Protocol addresses — the greatly encrypted kind comprising a string of amounts — are filed here than elsewhere on the earth.

It is a peculiar fact also it comes from the city’s history as a computing hub, thanks to its set of telecom businesses, data centers as well as the military.

The U.S. Department of Defense possesses more IP addresses than anyone else in the world — about 1.2 percent of the Internet space — and enrolls them all in Columbus, a National Geographic editor said in an e-mail.

“Columbus is really the epicenter of the IP address marketplace,” said Jason Treat, senior images editor at National Geographic.

Columbus has nearly 200 million more than a big international capital like London — and more IP addresses than all of Africa 224 million IP addresses, South America, Central America as well as the Middle East joined.

The most important reason behind the odd stat involves the U.S. military.

Military IP addresses are filed as having a real world street address of 3390 E. Broad St., Columbus. That is the Defense Supply Center.

“Why and how they’re used is not known to the people,” Treat said.

Large IP addresses could be viewed as similar to telephone area codes, in which each address can comprise a large number of phone numbers. Apparatus and most personal computers have their particular IP address.

However, while we do not understand what the military does with thousands of phone, we do understand why they’ve so many, said Matt Grover, executive director of technology at local advertising company Resource.

The rationale dates back decades.

“What we know of as the public Internet now started as the Department of Defense’s ARPANET network,” Grover said. When ARPANET — the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network — evolved into the world wide web, “lots of other government entities, corporations and possibly even universities got into the IP property-catch early on, while commercial ISPs (Internet Service Providers) really got in the game years later.”

Thus, since the military was initially involved in what became the Internet, Grover said, it was just natural “that the military has so many dang addresses.”

Telecommunications accounts for the majority of the remainder of the occurrence.

“Columbus is essentially the telecom capital of the planet,” said Toby Miller, a software designer at Resource. “Back in the late ’80s, UUNet (one of the biggest Internet service providers) located here as a method to transfer data for all the backbones between the East and West shores.”

Those data transfers occur in the junction of two fiber optic networks on the Far North Side, an intersection that isn’t too coincidentally right next to the headquarters of one of the area’s largest data facilities, DataCenter.BZ.

Gordon Scherer, CEO of DataCenter.BZ, fast enumerated some of the other motives Columbus would have so many IP addresses, as well as the military: “Call centers and Web hosting companies are also big users,” he said.

Scherer said that many IP addresses were enrolled to such important players as the state government as well as LCI, Qwest, AT&T, IBM, Battelle, Ohio State University.

“These are but a few that immediately come to mind,” Scherer said. “It is an excellent fact to add to the facts about Columbus, Ohio.”

What does all of this mean?

“It is a fascinating narrative,” Grover said, “But there is nothing that really elevates us in a practical sense. You can not browse the Web any quicker. It is only an intriguing manner that we are linked to Internet history.”