Technology

35770 readers

296 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.

Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.

Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

The internet was designed around principles of openness, simplicity, and decentralization, but Big Tech's private networks and protocols threaten the 'net, say internet registries (www.theregister.com)

submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

top 8 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

It's similar to the supply chain issues. Centralization and concentration are good for efficiency but they can lead to very fragile systems. When those fragile and now big systems break, they make for high profile events that serve as a warning and counterforce to efficiency.

It doesn't matter if you shave 0.1% off your bandwidth costs if you lose 5% of your customers every year due to outages.

So I think it will work itself out as long as people cancel and look for alternatives these things when they're not getting a good experience. Normalizing consumer rights is the best way to help this and plenty of other issues.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

"In this scenario, what remains outside these private networks are primarily ISP networks that move traffic to and from end users, and the user experience would be shaped by how close a user sits to the private network of the relevant internet company.”

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

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)?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

Yes it does appear that whether governments or corporations, they tend to have the loudest voices and most funding...

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

So looks like we have the internet represented by *NIC etc. that is political. The one that is build to top that is corporate... and some "blockchain" based on on top of that further that will be owned by cryptobros... got it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Are regional internet address registries political?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

Yeah, what I mean is that the "control" over the internet is based on participation of organizations controlled by each individual state (hopefully represented by democratically elected government, representing people etc.) in contrast to handful of global corporations that has escaped such governance. This makes the internet slow to move forward (e.g. IPv6, DNSSEC etc.) in contrast to "move fast and break things" (e.g. the CDN overlay, QUIC, HTTP/3 protocol etc.). So there is completely different dynamics, control and outcomes for us.