What if there were multiple Internets?

soundnfury

Banned
@soundnfury Wouldn't the whole differing address systems thing be partially avoided if there were national "internets", or at least a nationally-approved address protocol?
I still don't think it works. Something like Minitel or Prestel (I don't see how Teletext could become an internet, though I love it dearly) really doesn't have the notion of an 'address' per se, just a 'phone number you call to get to the server. In other words, it's much like UUCP or FidoNet, except that you have far fewer servers than subscribers.
The step from disparate networks to a national internetwork is much bigger than the step from national internetworks to a global one, so I must assume you're suggesting a national (non-inter) network. I suppose it's not impossible, but it seems unlikely. Consider how attached Speccy or Beeb users were to their preferred computing platform; I think you'd get the same (or even stronger) sentiment with networks. If the government tries to come along and declare Prestel the One True British Network, no-one's going to listen to them — the 'phone lines will still carry your Beeb BBS's traffic just as well as they would yesterday. It might be possible for Minitel (because, as you say, France) but there's no way the ornery individualists of the UK (or US) will stand for such regulation.
Of course where the network gets Franced the system they settle on will be preserved in aspic, while the anarchic folks next door will be rapidly developing the technology through competition and distributed initiative. So if internetworking does evolve, it's far more likely to come out of the yeasty turmoil of the unofficial nets — after all, they're the ones with a real need for it, and they might be looking for ways to get France-like national address spaces without France-like nationalised networks. But maybe the latter is necessary to plant the idea of the former in people's minds.
I guess the conclusion here is that *France invents the Web, then *UK or *US invents the Internet so that they can have the Web too. Say, wasn't TimBL based at CERN, in... France! (And we all thought it was Switzerland. Turns out, info.cern.ch was hosted just across the border.)
 
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