In times of global upheaval, there are often moves from within and outside of countries to disconnect certain areas from the Internet – either as a mechanism for oppression or as a form of sanction. When action of this kind is taken, it results in a splintering of the open, global Internet infrastructure and impacts the use of the Internet for everyone. This concept is known as the “splinternet”.
To understand the Splinternet and its impact on global information flows, it is first necessary to understand the Internet itself. The Internet consists of long-distance carriers that transport data across and between countries and connect continents, including terrestrial, undersea and satellite networks.
The Internet is – as the name suggests – a network of networks. Typically, the Googles, Facebooks, and telecom companies (E.g. Telekom Malaysia, Time) of the world each operate their own computer networks – much like we do at home, with our router and WiFi network, but much, much bigger. There are around 65,000 different networks in the world, and examples of these include:
● Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecom companies that provide fixed-line connections to households and companies, as well as mobile operators (Maxis, Celcom, Digi)
● Content networks, such as social media, video and music streaming and gaming networks (Facebook, TikTok, Spotify, Netflix)
● Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, as well as application providers offering software as a service (e.g. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace)
● e-Commerce platforms and website hosters (Mudah, Shoppee, Lazada)
● Long-distance carriers that transport data across and between countries and connect continents, including terrestrial, undersea and satellite networks
These networks are interconnected. That is the “inter” part of the word “Internet”. So the Internet really is, quite simply, a network of networks which are all connected with each other.
The navigation system tells the data where to go.
By 2023, Cisco forecasts that there will be 3.6 networked devices and connections per person globally — that means close to 30 billion. With so many devices accessing and sharing data across 65,000 networks, the question is then: how does the data know where to go? The answer is that each device needs to connect to a network, such as how your smartphone connects to your home WiFi, and these networks need to talk to one another, in order to navigate the data flow to the
right destination. The result is that your smartphone can talk to the website, application, cloud resource, or other kinds of data or devices.
To navigate any complex system, there need to be ways of identifying things. For example, if we want to call a particular person, we need to know their phone number.
The Internet also has such identifiers. Firstly, we have domain names (such as mudah.com). The Domain Name System (DNS) functions as the telephone directory of the Internet. Computers work much better with numbers than with names. So, in principle, the networks exchange information from directories that map domain names to what we call IP addresses.
IP addresses are long strings of numbers that identify devices (such as servers, routers, computers, or smartphones) connected to the Internet and describe their position within a network, so that they can be located. An analogy for this would be your street address and house number. The IP address already provides a lot of information about how to find the resource you are looking for. But we still need a navigation system to find out how to get there.
Now we come to the networks which are also identified by a unique number, known as the Autonomous System Number, or ASN. An ASN is a bit like the geographical coordinates for a specific location on a map. It is only because of the ASN that networks can find and interconnect with each other, and data can flow.
The ASN is used as the main parameter for what is known as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP is a navigation tool for finding networks on the Internet, similar to how we use Google Maps for finding physical addresses. BGP is a language that enables computers to talk to each other about how to get to a certain destination, such as a website or a cloud. They do this by offering directions to the next network that the data will need to pass through on its way to its destination.
This system is not centralised – there is no global map which tells you the best way to get to your destination. Instead, each network passes the data through it – according to a set of policies – and on to neighbouring networks, so that the data can continue its journey towards its destination.
To sum up, we have identifiers for networks, and for devices connected to networks. This information is exchanged between networks using BGP, so that data can flow to where it’s meant to go.
Navigating a route across countries and around the world Now, imagine you are in Southeast Asia (let’s say Malaysia), and you want to access a website hosted in the United States of America. You connect to the Internet using your ISP or your mobile provider, but this network only has connections for your region (perhaps only your city). Your website request needs to pass through your network to a series of other networks, in order to eventually reach the network in the USA that the website server is connected to. From here, the data from the website will be sent back to your device in Malaysia. This is what we call “routing”.
This all happens extremely quickly, because firstly, routing decisions are automated within each network, and secondly, data can travel very fast – at the speed of light through fibre-optic cables.
Each network has sovereignty over data in its own network. This means that each network decides for itself, based on the information from neighbours, where the data going through that network will go next. A network can influence the routing decision, depending on whether they want to send data via the shortest path (which might be more expensive, if that is a “transit” path), or would prefer it to travel along a longer path that might be cheaper. This means that we cannot say
for sure what route the data will take to get to its destination.
Navigating the Internet across networks, countries, and continents
As an analogy, think of a navigation tool with multiple regional instances – let’s say, one separate map for each country, with each country representing a single network that the data needs to pass through. You send a request from your network in Malaysia to the website in the USA. The data will need to travel across Southeast Asia, and then across the North Pacific Ocean. It might take the easiest route which is the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) Cable System route, but there’s no guarantee. It might travel via Japan or via Guam to the US. There are any number of routes it might take between the continents, depending on the policies and decisions of each network along the way. However, the data first needs to get across the North Pacific Ocean.
To put it simply, each network has its own view of the world, based on the information within the network as well as what is given by neighbouring networks. As a result, each network can only give a statement based on this information. If you want to go to Vietnam, the navigation tool for Malaysia can tell you that it seems like a good idea to go via Thailand and to get there, you just take the route XY. However, when you get to Thailand, perhaps the navigation tool for Malaysia tells you that, unfortunately, the road heading directly northeast is blocked because of an accident.
Therefore, you will need to take route YZ – it is a detour, but at least the traffic is moving on it. Now, if one of your neighbouring networks is having problems with its connectivity, then there is generally the possibility that the data can take another path, as long as your network is connected to multiple neighbouring networks. So, looking at our analogy above, if for some reason all the highways in Thailand are blocked, and this information has been passed on to the Malaysian
network, then your request might be routed via the Philippines or Indonesia on its way towards the North Pacific Ocean.
And that’s basically how data flows on the Internet. It’s really individual decisions made by networks that talk to each other using BGP to exchange information about how they see the world.
Article Contribution: Dr. Thomas King, CTO, DE-CIX
