Part of a Whole: RENATER, a Twenty-Year-Old Network within the Internet

Internet history cannot entirely reflect the complexity of the network of networks’ genesis and development if it does not take into account parallel or rival projects and national paths. This article shows how the study of a specific network, for example, RENATER (the French National Telecommunications Network for Technology, Education and Research, both a public interest group and a network born in 1993), can also shed light, in a detailed way, on Internet history. It seeks to demonstrate how this case study allows for a more nuanced picture of an “Internet-centric” and teleological vision of Internet history.