Russia is Risking the Creation of a “Splinternet”

upstart writes:

Russia is risking the creation of a "splinternet":

[...] So what would a real splinternet look like in practice? And how close are we to it? An actual splintering of the internet-rather than different countries using different platforms on the same underlying architecture-could take one of two forms, according to Milton Mueller of the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"A major, serious splintering of the internet would involve a technically incompatible protocol used by a critical mass of the world's population," he says. This first type of splintering would not be catastrophic. "Technologists would probably find a way to bridge the two protocols in short order," says Mueller.

The second form of splintering would be to continue using technically compatible protocols, but to have different governing bodies managing those services. This might prove trickier to reverse.

If Russia, China, or some other countries formed rivals to the bodies that manage IP addresses and DNS and got them established, that could be even harder to put back together than if they built rival technological protocols. Vested interests would form, wanting to stay with one or the other body, making the politics of reconnection almost impossible.

The problem of reconnecting these disparate networks into one global internet would thus be a political one, not a technical one-but it's often the political problems that are the most difficult to solve.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.