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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

anternet en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /ˈæn(t)ɚˌnɛt/ (General-American)
  • /ˈæntəˌnɛt/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

Blend of ant + internet. Coined by Balaji Prabhakar, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University.

Meanings

  1. (no-plural) The means by which ants communicate with each other, analogous to the TCP/IP algorithm that the internet uses to control the flow of data.
    • 2013, Stanford course explores social networking in the 18th century – and in nature, Stanford News She and Balaji Prabhakar, a professor of electrical engineering and of computer science, last year published a paper showing that the ants' "anternet" algorithm follows the same rules as the protocols that regulate data traffic congestion on the Internet.
    • Long before researchers invented the Internet, ants invented something kind of like an anternet, and the two networks work pretty much the same way. 2012, The Ant Internet, IEEE Spectrum