So says a Study on the Internet’s Technical Success Factors commissioned by APNIC and LACNIC – the regional internet address registries for the Asia–Pacific and Latin America and Caribbean regions respectively – and written by consultancy Analysys Mason.
The document states that “a significant fraction of global IP traffic now consists of data that is moved between the datacentres and edge networks of large internet companies.” Those companies’ needs, and growing networks, lead the analysts to suggest that "over time, we could see the internet transform into a more centralised system with a few global private networks carrying most of the content and services.
Another risk is that when private networks break, many users suffer. Exhibit A: yesterday’s AWS brownout, which hurt Netflix and Disney+, among others.
Yet, if you look at nearly all the alternative social networks springing up, you’ll see decentralisation, openness, interoperability, chronological feeds, no Big Tech…
See https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/09/study_on_the_internets_technical_success_factors/
#technology #interoperability #BigTech #openstandards #decentralisation
This is already a thing. All major CNDs bind with major ISP directly via major internet exchanges. Netflix and Google put their content servers (big caches) directly in the ISP networks already; otherwise the internet backbone would not be able to handle all the traffic long time ago.
That may be so, but the outages also have a way bigger impact. The question is where the exclusivity will lead us… to privately owned routing (for those who can afford it)?
Good question. I hope not. For now corporations are shaping the routing but I think we are not fully dependent on them yet. But it feels like the forces are stacked against the principles that made the internet and if we don’t protect them the outcomes will be very bad.
Yes it does appear that whether governments or corporations, they tend to have the loudest voices and most funding…