Gateways – just as important as standards. How the Internet won the “religious war” about standards in Scandinavia

Ole Hanseth, Department of informatics, University of Oslo, Norway

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2/14/2002)

This article presents the (hi)story about the Nordunet project and its "plug." This is a (hi)story about how the Internet "won" the "religious war" about computer communication protocol standards in Scandinavia. This history teaches us important lessons about how the Nordic countries (except Denmark) became the leading ones in the adoption and use of the Internet. On a more general level this story also teaches us an important lesson about the importance of gateways in the design and establishment of large scale computer networks and information infrastructures. It is a universal truth the development of such technologies requires standards. And this story teaches us that gateways are equally important. The main conclusion to be drawn is that what really matters in the development of such technologies is to combine and balance the use of gateways and standards in a proper way.