[ih] Preparing for the splinternet

[Karl Auerbach]

On 3/10/22 5:02 PM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via 
Internet-history wrote:

> EXCERPT:
>
> According to Wikipedia
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splinternet#:~:text=The%20splinternet%20>, a
> researcher at the Cato Institute first used the word "splinternet" in 2001
> to describe the idea of "parallel Internets that would be run as distinct,
> private and autonomous universes."

Well, "splinternet" it isn't quite "Internet history", it's more of a 
prophesy of things that could come.  And I sense that none of us want 
disjoint "splinters", and I don't think users want that either.  But if 
we use the analogy of wood then today's Internet is nice, clear lumber. 
And what we have called "splinternet" might be gluelams or fiberboard, 
i.e. many pieces that are joined to form something that is at least as 
strong and useful as a timber cut from a single tree.

If we expand our view of Internet History to encompass predecessors we 
see that that "splinters" have existed yet the system as a whole 
provided acceptable service to users.

Perhaps the earliest system that used store-and-forward handling of 
electronic messages was the telegraph system that arose in the 1830s.  
Although it was never a single technically uniform global system, it did 
have "splinters" that worked acceptably well and were sufficiently 
joined so that from the users' point of view, it was one system.

(We can say the same about the voice telephone system, but I view that 
more as a circuit switching paradigm rather than store-and-forward 
message handling.)

I, personally, am of the belief that just as the Internet began as a 
single network and then became a network of networks, i.e. an Internet, 
the time may be near when we add yet another tier; that the Internet 
evolves into a network of internets.

How this may come to pass is uncertain.  However, I believe that the 
weak fracture plane is that users no longer care about elegant 
end-to-end principles but, rather, live in a world of Apps and those 
users care nothing whether the underlying plumbing is elegant or a 
jumble - the users only care that their favorite Apps work.

Early Internet protocols needed end-to-end connections.  But as the 
years passed more and more protocols were designed with the idea that 
they could operate via relays and proxies.  SMTP was an early one, HTTP 
a later one.  It is that acceptance of proxies and relays that reduces 
the strength of the end-to-end principle to act as a glue that holds the 
Internet into a single system.

(This is not a negative reflection on those protocols; it is merely the 
recognition that a useful and common "feature" may also become the means 
through which the net could separate into realms that touch one another 
only via relays and proxies.)

I wrote about this some years ago in note I titled "Internet: Quo Vadis 
(Where are you going?)" at 
https://www.cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/internet_quo_vadis/

         --karl--