A national intranet is an Internet Protocol-based walled garden network maintained by a nation state as a national substitute for the global Internet, with the aim of controlling and monitoring the communications of its inhabitants, as well as restricting their access to outside media.[1] Other names have been used, such as the use of the term halal internet in Islamic countries.
Such networks generally come with access to state-controlled media and national alternatives to foreign-run Internet services: search engines, web-based email, and so forth.[2]
List of countries with national intranets
Myanmar
Burma before 2011 used to have a separate intranet for domestic use called Myanmar Wide Web.[3]
Cuba
Cuba has its own state-controlled intranet called national web.[4][5][6][7]
North Korea's Kwangmyong network, dating back to 2000, is the best-known of this type of network. Cuba and Myanmar also use a similar network system that is separated from the rest of the Internet.[8]
The network uses domain names under the .kp top-level domain that are not accessible from the global Internet.[9] As of 2016 the network uses IPv4 addresses reserved for private networks in the 10.0.0.0/8 range.[9]
Russia
In 2020 Russia tested internal internet known as RuNet (Internet in Russian Federation territory).[10]
A primary insight flows from our research and it pertains to the stability of China’s internet: the internet in China is a walled garden in terms of structure yet at the same time dependent upon Western Europe and the United States for foreign connectivity.[11][12][13] Put plainly, in terms of resilience, China could effectively withdraw from the global public internet and maintain domestic connectivity (essentially having an intranet).[14][15][16] This means the rest of the world could be restricted from connecting into China, and vice versa for external connections for Chinese businesses/users.[17][18][19]
The National Information Network of Iran works like the Great Firewall of China.[20][21][22] In April 2011, a senior Iranian official, Ali Agha-Mohammadi announced government plans to launch its own halal internet, which would conform to Islamic values and provide appropriate services.[23] Creating such a network, similar to the North Korean example, would prevent unwanted information from outside Iran getting into the closed system.[8] The Iranian walled garden would have its own localized email service and search engine.[24]
