IAN Demo

Presently, ISPs use a multitude of modems to build a paywall around their entire network. From a consumer’s perspective, there is no difference between the ISP’s network and the internet itself.

Consequently, not even next-door neighbors can use the ISP’s network to communicate with each other, unless both pay the ISP for access to the internet.

This modus operandi disadvantages the ISP as much as its customers! Consider the irony of an ISP having a broadband connection to every one of its customers, but prohibiting them from using it to communicate with the ISP itself — even to pay an overdue bill!

Both of these functional faux pas would be fixed if, instead of walling-in its entire network, an ISP were to install a paywall, a ‘toll booth,’ at the point where its proprietary Local Area Network (LAN) connects to the Wide Area Network (WAN), i.e. the ‘internet.’

Placing only the internet behind a paywall, rather than its entire network, allows the ISP to use its LAN as a kind of intranet.

Intranets are typically built by large and medium sized organizations to segregate their internal communications from the rest of the world. IAN is an intranet with the opposite aspiration; include everybody and exclude nobody, within a geographic territory. To distinguish between an exclusive and an inclusive intranet, let’s refer to the later as an island.