Internet Fragmentation

Internet Fragmentation is the idea that the Internet may be in danger of splitting into a series of cyberspace segments, thus endangering its connectivity.

During the 2015 World Economic Forum, Internet fragmentation was noted as one of the primary concerns facing the future of the internet, due to trends in technological developments, government policies, and commercial practices. Nonetheless, there was no widespread consensus as to its nature or scope.

The launch of the World Economic Forum's multi-year Future of the Internet Initiative (FII) considers Internet fragmentation as one of the primary topics warranting exploration, in the context of the FII's Governance on the Internet project.

Nature of Fragmentation

Working definitions are proposed for three forms of fragmentation:

• Technical Fragmentation: Conditions in the underlying infrastructure that impede the ability of systems to fully interoperate and exchange data packets and of the Internet to function consistently at all end points.
• Governmental Fragmentation: Government policies and actions that constrain or prevent certain uses of the Internet to create, distribute, or access information resources.
• Commercial Fragmentation: Business practices that constrain or prevent certain uses of the Internet to create, distribute, or access information resources.

In each case, fragmentation may vary greatly according to a number of dimensions or attributes. Four primary ones include:

• Occurrence:' Whether a type of fragmentation exists or is merely a potential
• Intentionality: Whether fragmentation is the result of deliberate action or an unintended consequence
• Impact: Whether fragmentation is deep, structural and configurative of large swaths of activity or even the Internet as a whole, or rather more shallow, malleable and applicable to a narrowly bounded set of processes, transactions and actors
• Character: Whether fragmentation is generally positive, negative, or neutral

Types of Fragmentation

Technical Fragmentation

Internet addressing, interconnection, naming, and security are primary issue areas leading to technical fragmentation. Within these categories, 12 kinds of fragmentation are identified:

1. Network Address Translation
2. IPv4 and IPv6 incompatibility and the dual-stack requirement
3. Routing corruption
4. Firewall protections
5. Virtual private network isolation and blocking
6. TOR "onion space" and the "dark web"
7. Internationalized Domain Name technical errors
8. Blocking of new gTLDs
9. Private name servers and the split-horizon DNS
10. Segmented Wi-Fi services in hotels, restaurants, etc.
11. Possibility of significant alternate DNS roots
12. Certificate authorities producing false certificates

Governmental Fragmentation

The most common imagery of “governmental fragmentation” is of the global public Internet being divided into digitally bordered “national Internets”. Movement in the direction of national segmentation could entail, inter alia, establishing barriers that impede Internet technical functions, or block the flow of information and e-commerce over the infrastructure. Pressure and trends in this direction do exist, as do counter-pressures. Six issue-areas are reviewed, including: content and censorship; e-commerce and trade; national security; privacy and data protection; data localization; and fragmentation as an overarching national strategy. Within these categories, 10 kinds of fragmentation of varying degrees of significance are identified: 1. Filtering and blocking websites, social networks or other resources offering undesired contents 2. Attacks on information resources offering undesired contents 3. Digital protectionism blocking users’ access to and use of key platforms and tools for electronic commerce 4. Centralizing and terminating international interconnection 5. Attacks on national networks and key assets 6. Local data processing and/or retention requirements 7. Architectural or routing changes to keep data flows within a territory 8. Prohibitions on the transborder movement of certain categories of data 9. Strategies to construct “national Internet segments” or “cybersovereignty” 10.International frameworks intended to legitimize restrictive practices

Commercial Fragmentation

A variety of critics have charged that certain commercial practices by technology companies also may contribute to Internet fragmentation. The nature of the alleged fragmentation often pertains to the organization of specific markets and digital spaces and the experiences of users that choose to participate in them, but sometimes it can impact the technical infrastructure and operational environments for everyone. Whether or not one considers commercial practices as meriting the same level of concern as, say, data localization is of course a matter of perspective. Certainly there are significant concerns from the perspectives of many Internet users, activists and competing providers in global markets. As such, the issues are on the table in 6 the growing global dialogue about fragmentation, and they are therefore discussed here. Five issue-areas are reviewed, including: peering and standardization; network neutrality; walled gardens; geo-localization and geo-blocking; and infrastructure-related intellectual property protection. Within these categories, 10 kinds of fragmentation of varying degrees of significance are identified: 1. Potential changes in interconnection agreements 2. Potential proprietary technical standards impeding interoperability in the IoT 3. Blocking, throttling, or other discriminatory departures from network neutrality 4. Walled gardens 5. Geo-blocking of content 6. Potential use of naming and numbering to block content for the purpose of intellectual property protection