In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the role of DNS in directing where your applications connect to, and where content comes from. Although this more “steering” traffic than it “routing” in the strict sense of IP packet forwarding, (that’s still the function of the border gateway protocol or BGP) It does in fact represent a kind of routing decision, to select a content source or server logistically “best” or “closest” to you. So in the spirit of “Orange is the new Black” -DNS is the new BGP.

As this change in delivery of content has emerged, the effective control on this kind of routing decision has also become more concentrated, into the hands of the small number of at-scale Content Distribution Networks (CDN) and associated DNS providers worldwide. This is far less than the 80,000 or so BGP speakers with their own AS and represents another trend to be thought about. How we optimise content delivery isn’t decided in common amongst us, its managed by simpler contractual relationships between content owner and intermediaries.

The upside of course remains the improvement in efficiency of fetch for each client, the reduction in delay and loss. But the evolution of the Internet over time and the implications for governance in “steering” decisions is going to be of increasing concern.

Read more about Geoff’s views of Concentration in the Internet, Governance, and Economics on the APNIC Blog and at APNIC Labs:

• DNS is the new BGP
• Internet Governance in 2023
• On Internet Centrality and Fragmentation
• The Internet as a Public Utility
• An Economic Perspective on Internet Centrality
• Looking at Centrality in the DNS