I always thought the internet was not owned by ANYONE, however with the news of the NSA stuff I have been performing tracert's at my end and I notice that EVERYTHING passes through the USA. So if the USA was to shut off the internet at their end, would it disrupt everything globally?<p>For example if I connect to a server in France, for some reason that goes through the West Coast USA...
How are you connecting to that French server? If you're using a domain name, maybe the nameservers are located in the US.<p>If you're using an IP address then that sounds a little strange.