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Avoiding Internet Centralization

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Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#31

Post by tkojames »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #23
walrus01 wrote: post #11

Something not really covered is this concept: "Maybe don't let one telecom company acquire too much control". Look at the history of everything that was acquired by either Qwest/CenturyLink or Level3, and then the merger of Level3. You can't tell me that the existence of Lumen, the combined Centurylink-Level3 entity is good for anyone, except for their shareholders. It's the very definition of too much centralization…

Also need fat upload pipes (i.e. fiber) to individuals’ homes so they can operate their own backup and peer to peer services. When 90%+ of people have no upload capacity at their house, and are behind tons of CGNAT, then onedrive/iCloud/google drive become the only solution for storing your things you can access later. Same with chat protocols.

They just rolled out att fiber into my neighborhood. I was surprised as I live in a older neighborhood. Have overhead power lines talked with att installer and he said that was the reason we go it. Went from 1 gig down 30 mbps upload cable for 100 a month to 70 for gig full up and down and they gave me 400 bucks for signing up. It is pretty awesome having a direct fiber line to the house. My brother lives in Santa Rosa California and is on the list to get 10 gig fiber from Sonic for 65 a month. Hopefully things are starting to change. Once he has it I was thinking of just doing rysnc between us for backup.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#32

Post by betterunix2 »

"Internet routing requires addresses to be allocated uniquely, but if the addressing function were captured by a single government or company"

Technically it is so captured -- IANA is the root of the hierarchy that distributes both IP address assignments and ASN assignments -- and the RIRs are effectively centralized authorities in their regions. Thus far it has not been a problem.

With a larger address space and longer ASNs you could decentralize the entire process. Basically, subnets and ASNs would be hashes of public keys, and you would use a path-vector protocol where the NLRIs contain NIZKs proving knowledge of the secret keys and asserting who the NLRI was sent to at each hop (identified by ASN). It is not current being considered because (1) it would greatly increase the cost of routers and related infrastructure and (2) thus far there is no immediate need.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#33

Post by aspenmayer »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #29
nathias wrote: post #3

> Some protocols require the introduction of centralization risk that is unavoidable by nature. For example, when there is a need a single, globally coordinated 'source of truth', that facility is by nature centralized. No, there is nothing unavoidable in making a centralized DNS system.

In fact, isn't torrent magnet links exactly this kind of a system? You can locate files on thousands of peer systems, without using a centralized tracker.

DHT definitely seems to fit. You can even search the DHT itself without using torrents or magnet links at all.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#34

Post by betterunix2 »

cj wrote: post #27
betterunix2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... 1970: Early networks suffered from congestive collapse problems, routing protocols were slow to converge, computed suboptimal routes, and had count-to-infinity problems, only a handful of transit networks existed, domain names were managed by one dude broadcasting a file to everyone, little to no security infrastructure, etc. 2021: We have robust congestion control and queue management, scalable routing protoco…

I see your point, but do all those network level improvements mean much to the end user when so many critical services live in datacenters owned by 1 company? Many of which in a single region on the east coast, that goes dark at least a couple times a year for hours on end?

Some perspective: in 1986 the Internet experienced a congestive collapse that reduced the useful throughput by 3 orders of magnitude. End users noticed, and if it happened today there would be pandemonium.

The Internet has become so robust and reliable that end users take the network for granted. At this point most of the headline-making incidents involve services running on the Internet, not the Internet itself (at least in the US, EU, and other highly-connected regions/countries; there are still countries that can be taken offline by just one cable being severed, and their Internet users cannot take the network for granted yet). In my adult life there have only been a handful of significant, global outages/reductions in service quality on the Internet itself. Regional outages happen from time to time, though few are significant enough to make national or international news.

So yes, network-level improvements mean a lot to end users -- they mean that end users can rely on the network itself, and only have to worry about problems at higher levels of the stack.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#35

Post by user_named »

I think centralization is just a property of reality. Everything is centralized. Crypto is centralized in certain ways (mining capacity, holdings), capital is centralized to the top 0.1% in every country and so on.

It is better to design systems to handle centralization than with the assumption that they will remain decentralized, which would sort of break them.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#36

Post by edoceo »

cj wrote: post #27
betterunix2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... 1970: Early networks suffered from congestive collapse problems, routing protocols were slow to converge, computed suboptimal routes, and had count-to-infinity problems, only a handful of transit networks existed, domain names were managed by one dude broadcasting a file to everyone, little to no security infrastructure, etc. 2021: We have robust congestion control and queue management, scalable routing protoco…

I see your point, but do all those network level improvements mean much to the end user when so many critical services live in datacenters owned by 1 company? Many of which in a single region on the east coast, that goes dark at least a couple times a year for hours on end?

Is it really that frequent? Or does it just feel huge cause it owns so much?

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#37

Post by notriddle »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #8
nathias wrote: post #3

> Some protocols require the introduction of centralization risk that is unavoidable by nature. For example, when there is a need a single, globally coordinated 'source of truth', that facility is by nature centralized. No, there is nothing unavoidable in making a centralized DNS system.

Right. Even putting aside blockchain-based systems, you can have systems without a dictator because they're based on voting. Suppose the root is a set of public keys, each with a top level domain. Adding one requires a supermajority of the others to agree. Removing one is impossible; it can sign its own successor and that's it. You now have a federated system with no single chokepoint.

> because they're based on voting

All voting systems require protection against Sybil attacks. The best methods to protect against Sybil attacks are centralized. The not-best methods use proof of work, which has extreme downsides and only makes Sybil attacks expensive, not impossible.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#38

Post by betterunix2 »

walrus01 wrote: post #26
betterunix2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... 1970: Early networks suffered from congestive collapse problems, routing protocols were slow to converge, computed suboptimal routes, and had count-to-infinity problems, only a handful of transit networks existed, domain names were managed by one dude broadcasting a file to everyone, little to no security infrastructure, etc. 2021: We have robust congestion control and queue management, scalable routing protoco…

It wasn't supposed to be serious , but for anyone that's ever seen a catastrophic level3 failure as a peer or large customer of AS3356... It's less resilient than you think. There are way too many eggs in one basket in some places.

Global outages or reductions in service quality are very rare these days. Regional outages happen from time to time but are not very common. Local outages are frequent, but irrelevant -- the Internet is meant to be resilient to local outages, which presupposes that local outages are a common concern. Obviously if you shrink your scope enough you will be able to say problems happen regularly -- considering only the connectivity in my home there are many incidents each year.

The most significant incident in recent memory involved a severed fiber optic line in New York City earlier this year, which affected the US Northeast in various ways. The impact was relatively short-lived, and despite living and working in NYC I was not personally affected at all -- even though I use Verizon FIOS and the line in question was operated by Verizon (a testament to how resilient Verizon's own network is). That is the mark of an extremely robust system -- a major, overly-centralized component (one cable carrying many supposedly redundant links) is destroyed and the effects remain highly localized and the impact is not universal even within the local area.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#39

Post by notriddle »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #29
nathias wrote: post #3

> Some protocols require the introduction of centralization risk that is unavoidable by nature. For example, when there is a need a single, globally coordinated 'source of truth', that facility is by nature centralized. No, there is nothing unavoidable in making a centralized DNS system.

In fact, isn't torrent magnet links exactly this kind of a system? You can locate files on thousands of peer systems, without using a centralized tracker.

But not human readable, so not a replacement for DNS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#40

Post by FridayoLeary »

walrus01 wrote: post #11

Something not really covered is this concept: "Maybe don't let one telecom company acquire too much control". Look at the history of everything that was acquired by either Qwest/CenturyLink or Level3, and then the merger of Level3. You can't tell me that the existence of Lumen, the combined Centurylink-Level3 entity is good for anyone, except for their shareholders. It's the very definition of too much centralization…

Is it? In the UK BT owns all the wires and stuff yet i don't think it majorly affects consumers, nor are their competitiors being crushed.
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