Structure
An important characteristic of the Chinese internet is that the access routes to the Internet are owned by the Chinese government, and private enterprises and individuals can only rent the bandwidth from state. The first four major national networks, namely CSTNET, ChinaNet, CERNET and CHINAGBN, are the "backbone" of the mainland China Internet. Later dominant telecom providers also started to provide Internet services. Public Internet services are usually provided by provincial telecom companies, which sometimes are traded between networks. Internet service providers without a nation-wide network such as the Information highway could not compete with their bandwidth provider, the telecom companies, and often run out of business.
The interconnection between these networks is a big concern of Internet users, since Internet traffic via the global Internet is quite slow. However, major Internet services providers are reluctant to aid rivals.
Read more about this topic: Internet In The People's Republic Of China
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
“The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)