Internets?

October 14, 2004 7:35 AM

There really IS more than one internet?First off - I'm no Bush fan, but I'm wondering if his use of the word 'internets' (although probably unintentional) isn't so wrong after all. It's no secret (pardon the pun) to those in the military and government work that there are other 'internets', such as the SIPRNET. I'm no expert on the technicalities, but I think a user could take a leap and say that the NIPRNET and the SIPRNET are two totally different entities. Just pointing out a technicality, spreading a little knowledge, and adding the disclaimer that this post has no bearing on Bush's mishandled use of the term to begin with!
posted by matty (33 comments total)

What is an Internet, really? File-sharing connections and addresses. Change any of these three and you have a differerent system.

That is, if your files are not compatible, say due to encryption; or your computers connect through different phone lines, or servers, or with p2p connections, or torrent-like chains; or if they have addresses unidentifiable to outsiders, say with a restricted alias list.

And that is just in the Internet configuration. Many other simple software and hardware mods would severely limit external connectivity and create a unique Internet.
posted by kablam at 7:56 AM on October 14, 2004

From your stating that you are no fan of Bush, and by employing the “doth protest too much” principle, we can safely conclude that you must be a fan of Bush. And since you are a fan of Bush, it necessarily follows that the information you give in your post, which purports to show that Bush’s pluralising of the word “internet” might not have been quite as erroneous as many of us may have thought it to be, is totally false, does not exist or can be arbitrarily dismissed. Here ends my hateful and bitter homage to Metafilterian logic. Please ignore it.
posted by ed\26h at 8:01 AM on October 14, 2004

I am also no Bush fan, and also had the same thought about SIPRNET. I was shouted down my more tech-savvy friends who insisted it was an Extranet or Intranet, not another Internet.

PoTAYto, PoTAHto, I guess. (Or is that potatoe?)
posted by JoanArkham at 8:02 AM on October 14, 2004

If you capitalize the word "Internet" because it's a proper name, then there is only one Internet. To say there is more than one means you're using the word in a very generic sense.
posted by fleener at 8:04 AM on October 14, 2004

Are there rumours in them?
posted by ikalliom at 8:06 AM on October 14, 2004

The Internet is a network of networks, all running the same or compatable protocols (TCP/IP, etc.) for data communications. Networks and parts of those networks, like individual servers, can come and go and there is still an Internet. Some networks might be private -- VPNs and WASTE networks -- but they are still a network and part of the Internet.

NIPRNET and SIPRNET sound like seperate, secure data networks, perhaps not connected to or part of the Internet, using their backbone network and router system, and therefore not part of the Internet. I assume there are a number of seperate networks still around that aren't "Internet" -- fifteen years ago that idea probably seemed a lot less odd to people than it does now.
posted by tranquileye at 8:09 AM on October 14, 2004

ed\ - you think to much. :)

Joan - I've received the same tounge-lashing from some of my friends... but I still look at it from the viewpoint that if I can surf it for information (albeit different types of information than I can find on the 'regular' internet) then for all my intents and purposes it is an 'internet'.

Nonetheless - I don't think Bush had the SIPR in mind when making his statement!

on preview - ikalliom... my point exactly!
posted by matty at 8:09 AM on October 14, 2004

don't forget about AOL !!!


(laughs loudly and runs away)
posted by a3matrix at 8:15 AM on October 14, 2004

To go off at something of a tangent, who is it who says PoTAHto?
posted by biffa at 8:15 AM on October 14, 2004

The Internet is a network of networks, all running the same or compatable protocols (TCP/IP, etc.) for data communications. Networks and parts of those networks, like individual servers, can come and go and there is still an Internet. Some networks might be private -- VPNs and WASTE networks -- but they are still a network and part of the Internet.

How about if you were to travel around the equator, cutting every cable you came by; would there then (notwithstanding satellite, wireless and what have you) be two internets, two private networks and no internet, or something else?
posted by ed\26h at 8:26 AM on October 14, 2004

In other news, scholars are reminding the general public that there is only one ocean on Earth, that is colloquially referred to as seven seas.
posted by Smart Dalek at 8:27 AM on October 14, 2004

NIPRNET and SIPRNET sound like separate, secure data networks, perhaps not connected to or part of the Internet, using their backbone network and router system, and therefore not part of the Internet. I assume there are a number of separate networks still around that aren't "Internet" -- fifteen years ago that idea probably seemed a lot less odd to people than it does now.

SIPRNET is the internal DoD classified network, and NIPRNET is the internal DoD un-classified network. NIPRNET is connected to the overall internet (I'm typing right now on a NIPRNET machine that connects to the internet), where SIPRNET is it's own internal network, and doesn't connect to the internet at all.

Overall, the internet is just the abstracted name we give to the collection networks across the globe. There are not "two internets". Bush, just as usual, fucked up and misspoke.
posted by SweetJesus at 10:02 AM on October 14, 2004

Rarely is the question asked, is the Mefites learning? :-)
posted by clevershark at 10:05 AM on October 14, 2004

Bush, just as usual, fucked up and misspoke.

Agreed, but SIPRNET isn't just internal DoD...other government agencies have access to it too (or at least parts of it).
posted by JoanArkham at 10:08 AM on October 14, 2004

The Internet...that's like the Web, right?
posted by solistrato at 10:10 AM on October 14, 2004

Where's the pun?
posted by swift at 10:11 AM on October 14, 2004

Agreed, but SIPRNET isn't just internal DoD...other government agencies have access to it too (or at least parts of it).

Internal in the sense that everything under the umbrella of "The Department of Defense", including all branches of the military, use SIPRNET. I also imagine that something like DoE would use it too, for all the experiments and data-sharing they do.
posted by SweetJesus at 10:18 AM on October 14, 2004

How about if you were to travel around the equator, cutting every cable you came by; would there then (notwithstanding satellite, wireless and what have you) be two internets, two private networks and no internet, or something else?

I think you'd have a single broken internet.

(this is like a variant of the old philosophy puzzle: if you break a gold ring up into two pieces, is it still a ring? Is it the same ring? If you melt it down to molten gold and use the gold to make a ring that looks identical, is it the same ring? There does not seem to be an easy answer...)
posted by advil at 11:08 AM on October 14, 2004

Any network of networks is an internet. By this standard, Bush is technically correct. Trivially and uninterestingly correct, but correct.

Still, the idea that ordinary people should know how many Internets there are (or that the Web and the Internet are different things, another common canard) is kind of silly.
posted by kindall at 11:27 AM on October 14, 2004

I think you'd have a single broken internet.

Exactly. The Internet is not quite so amorphous as all that -- you'd have routers with routes lacking a functional medium, resulting in a massive amount of valid, assigned address space that was physically unreachable; consequently to users on each side, the other half (though of course the southern bit would be much less than half) would be completely blacked out, but there'd be references to it everywhere. You'd have subnets physically disconnected from the backbone (this would happen anywhere a node was on the other side of the equator from its provider), and I'm not even sure that there are any root servers south of the equator, so forget DNS. However, if you were to do as you describe, and then reconfigure each of the two parts to be internally consistent and allow them both to use all the possible address space, then and only then would you have two internets.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:45 PM on October 14, 2004

But Bush was talking about the Internets on which people were discussing his policies. The only Internet they do that on is the... uh... Internet.
posted by eperker at 12:56 PM on October 14, 2004

Are these internets something I would need a television to know about? No? Just a computer, you say. Well, I'd best go do some research then.

*Stumbles off to Google.*
posted by stet at 2:03 PM on October 14, 2004

They have internets on computers now?
posted by ed\26h at 2:09 PM on October 14, 2004

Wait....you guys have computers?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:07 PM on October 14, 2004

One of my earliest linguistic memories is learning that deer applies to either a single deer or multiple deer. The same principle applies the Internet.

Who else had the deer experience? Or which word is it? Perhaps for Internet will be George's personal deer.
posted by juiceCake at 4:14 PM on October 14, 2004

And yet being familiar with the concept of proofing and previewing I make a mistake.

That's "applies to the word Internet."

Thank you.
posted by juiceCake at 4:16 PM on October 14, 2004

Advil: Yes, it certainly seems to be something similar – I originally had the idea of cutting in half an earthworm (not that I’d advocate such a thing of course) and then asking which living entity is the earthworm.

George_Spiggott: I think what you’ve said; without having giving it all that much thought, works perfectly well. But what I was trying to get at with my, admittedly rather abstract analogy, was, if there were two, similarly populated networks on Earth neither of which attempt or intent to communicate with the other, would there then be two “internets”? Or, as a more broad example, if there were a world that was similarly developed to ours and had a global network that they called “the internet” would there then be two, or is the concept a strictly numerically singular one? Obviously this is going far beyond whether or not Bush was wrong in making that rather silly statement, but it’s a fun one none the less.

If you capitalize the word "Internet" because it's a proper name, then there is only one Internet. To say there is more than one means you're using the word in a very generic sense.

If you refer to “Jane” you refer to a specific individual, but simply because you have used to word in this pronoun sense, does not mean that there is strictly one referent that this title can refer to.

Juicecake: I think you might have begged the question there.
posted by ed\26h at 4:37 PM on October 14, 2004

When you think of NIPRnet, just think of .mil sites, the military presence on the web. SIPRnet is separate as well as a few other exclusive military networks. And of course there's always Internet2, which can be called another Internet. All of these are individual entities beyond a company WAN or even MAN. They're as large and widespread as the Internet, just not as accessible.

Bush was right, but I think it was unintentional.
posted by tetsuo at 10:26 PM on October 14, 2004

He could get his briefings which talk about "the various internets" say such and such and this and that. Seriously, could you imagine George W. Bush surfing the web? Wasn't there a story of Bush not ever communicating by email again at the advent of his residency? Surely, that only meant emails sent over "our Internet". I'm sure there is a presidential network all the "president's own" which shows and communicates to him all that he himself is to ever know.

But, I agree, I think he misspoke. Think about it -- does your 55 year old dad know how to talk about the Internets?

My mom, honestly, does not know where her computer ends and the Internet begins.
posted by crasspastor at 11:24 PM on October 14, 2004

The answer is 42
posted by jasenlee at 12:35 AM on October 15, 2004

An internet (small "i") is any network of networks with a shared and routable IP address space. Many intranets (a newer term) are internets in this original sense of the word.

The Internet (capital "I") is the specific internet whose addresses are assigned by the IANA.

Thus only extremely savvy network gurus - and computer illiterate ignoramuses - are likely to use the word "internets."

Assigning one of these two categories to the present occupant of the White House is left as an exercise to the reader.
posted by anser at 3:13 PM on October 15, 2004

Actually, the stories I heard were about Clinton sending a total of 2 emails during his 8 years as president.
posted by NortonDC at 12:08 PM on October 16, 2004

I am also no Bush fan.

...what? No. That's all I wanted to say.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:29 PM on October 16, 2004