The Aethernet (the popular term used in place of its' official name of Interdimensional Nexus Network (INN) is the multiversial system of interconnected computer networks that uses Quantum Entanglement Communicators (QEC) and Multiverse Nexus Nodes(Nexus Nodes) collectively to link devices multiversewide. It is a network of networks that that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to a galactic scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, optical and aethergraphic networking technologies. The Aethernet caries a vast range of information resources and services. such as hypertext documents and application of the Interdimensional Nexus Network (INN/Nexus Web), aethergraphic mail, telephony, and file sharing.
The origins of the Aethernet date back to the First Multiverse War as a Alliance government and military-lead project to create a communication and data network to make communications and information among its' memberstates easier and making the war effort run more smoothly in turn. The Alliance achieved this by reverse engineering the Combine's own internal interuniversial network system, but in time, the rest of the Axis and Coalition also gain access to this system and made it a multiverse-wide network which is only further refined by the introduction of the Second Human Empire (then the United Federation of Species) technologies relating to interuniversial communications and data transmissions.
Most traditional communications media, including telephony, radio, aethervision, internet mail, and newspapers are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the aethernet, giving birth to new services such as aethermail, aethernet telephony, aethernet aethervision, aethergraphic music, aethergraphic newspapers, and aethervideo streaming aethersites. Newspaper, book, and other internet services adapting to aethernet technology, or are reshaped into blogging, net feeds and aethernet news aggregators. The aethernet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, aethernet forums, and social networking. Aethernet shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely on the aethernet. Business to business and financial services on the Aethernet affect supply chains across entire industries.
While the aethernet was created via a government program, the aethernet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network set its own policies. The overreaching definitions of the two principal namespaces on the Aethernet, the Interdimensional Nexus Protocol address (INP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Interdimensional Nexus Network Collective for Assigned Names and Numbers (INNCANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Interdimensional Nexus Network Engineering Task Force (INNETF), a loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.