How We Lost The Internet

TL;DR

This paper critically reexamines the foundational assumptions of Internet architecture, highlighting how the reliance on stateless datagram services led to private overlays like CDNs, which may hinder open data networking and contribute to the dominance of hypergiant platforms.

Contribution

It challenges the adequacy of the traditional stateless datagram model and suggests reconsidering this approach to address issues related to private overlays and commercial dominance.

Findings

Private overlays like CDNs emerged due to limitations of stateless datagram services.

Reliance on private overlays may hinder open data networking goals.

Hypergiant platforms' commercial strategies exploit these infrastructural limitations.

Abstract

In this paper we reexamine an assumption that underpinned the development of the Internet architecture, namely that a stateless and loosely synchronous point-to-point datagram delivery service would be sufficient to meet the needs of all network applications, including those which deliver content and services to a mass audience at global scale. Such applications are inherently asynchronous and point-to-multipoint in nature. We explain how the inability of distributed systems based on this stateless datagram service to provide adequate and affordable support for them within the public (I.e., universally shared and available) network led to the development of private overlay infrastructures, specifically Content Delivery Networks and distributed Cloud data centers. We argue that the burdens imposed by reliance on these private overlays may have been an obstacle to achieving the Open Data Networking goals of early Internet advocates. The contradiction between those initial goals and the exploitative commercial imperatives of hypergiant overlay operators is offered as a possibly important reason for the negative impact of their most profitable applications (e.g., social media) and monetization strategies (e.g., targeted advertisement). We propose that one important step in resolving this contradiction may be to reconsider the adequacy Internet's stateless datagram service model.