Local Grids or planetary Grids, sometimes divided into state or national Grids, are defined primarily by jurisdiction or ownership. It is at the local level that the vast majority of the infrastructure of the Grid is found. Everything above this level is made up from connected local Grids, and everything below this level comes together to create these sectors.

The sectors are where all of the work, all of the fun, all of the action of the Grid takes place. While the capacities and protocols of individual Grids can vary wildly, all Grids include separate regions devoted to the major data formats: data, comm, virtuality, and DV. Each of these subnets is interlaced with the others and partially compatible with them. These regions, or sectors, can be organized or interfaced differently across different Grids, and some Grids include additional sectors devoted to special purposes and functions. Every Grid, however, includes sectors optimized to handle the four basic information formats.

The comm sector provides text, voice, and video messaging services for anyone with the appropriate hardware. Digital wiretapping, interception of transmissions, and shadow form relay all use comm sector domains and hardware, which make up the backbone of the Grid. In a sense, the comm sector forms the sewers, phone lines, and cable systems of the Grid.

The data sector is the Grid’s information warehouse. Like a giant library, the data sector stores everything from patents to novels, political analysis to sports statistics, census data to schematics for technology obsolete through bleeding edge. This is usually the largest sector of any Grid and tends to be cluttered and crowded. A set of protocols called the Alexandrine Reform were implemented during the Fusion age to bring some sense of order to the cataloguing and organization of data sectors. Even so, much of the information found in any data sector is worthless junk, garbage dumped onto the Grid by cranks, salespeople, and amateurs.

The virtuality sector features graphics-heavy, rendered-on-the-fly, continuously up-dated real-time environments. Virtual settings of all kinds are found here, from the seediest data fringes to the most advanced scientific simulations.

Finally, the DV sector encompasses video, holo, and audio material of every sort. It is heaven for the committed couch potato, but offers little in the way of useful data for any purpose other than entertainment and passive education.