Abstract
This chapter analyzes the materialities of Internet protocols, focusing on the relationship between content and conduit, which involves both the compression and modulation of signals. Network protocols are shaped by material constraints. Similarly, the centrality of routing to the Internet can be understood materially in terms of the arrangement of network nodes, the cost of routing, the structure of networks, the size of routing tables, and the dynamics of connectivity. Critically, this materiality cuts across apparently different domains of concern—from the practice of network operations to the rhetoric of democratic access. The chapter then contrasts two different protocols, the Routing Information Protocol and the Exterior Gateway Protocol, which emerged in different historical moments and cultural conditions. Examining the social construction of these network protocols can help differentiate the actual Internet from a possible or imagined Internet.
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