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. 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.

National intranet

List of countries with national intranets

Myanmar

Burma before 2011 used to have a separate intranet for domestic use called Myanmar Wide Web.

National intranet

Cuba

Cuba has its own state-controlled intranet called national web.

National intranet

North Korea

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. The network uses domain names under the .kp top-level domain that are not accessible from the global Internet. As of 2016 the network uses IPv4 addresses reserved for private networks in the 10.0.0.0/8 range.

Russia

In 2020 Russia tested internal internet known as RuNet (Internet in Russian Federation territory).

China

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. Put plainly, in terms of resilience, China could effectively withdraw from the global public internet and maintain domestic connectivity (essentially having an intranet). This means the rest of the world could be restricted from connecting into China, and vice versa for external connections for Chinese businesses/users.

Iran

The National Information Network of Iran works like the Great Firewall of China. 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. Creating such a network, similar to the North Korean example, would prevent unwanted information from outside Iran getting into the closed system. The Iranian walled garden would have its own localized email service and search engine.

See also

Internet censorship by country

Intranet

Surveillance state

Splinternet

References

Internet censorship

Mass surveillance