Rethinking the Success of the Internet

The global Internet, despite its many flaws, remains one of the most enduring, evolving, and enabling infrastructures ever built. It has scaled by withstanding massive surges in usage, it has resisted geopolitical stress, natural disasters, and deliberate attacks. It has absorbed shocks from cyberattacks to global pandemics without falling apart. That staying power is often described in a single word: resilience.

But what does resilience actually mean for the Internet? And more urgently, are we investing enough in understanding and sustaining it?

A Study to See the Internet As It Is — Not As It Was Dreamed

Four years ago, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, amid rising questions about whether the Internet had veered too far from its ideals, I commissioned a study alongside our partners at LACNIC and led by Analysys Mason. The Internet was being questioned: by governments, standards bodies, and even its original architects. Was it still fit for purpose? Was it secure? Did it need a fundamental redesign?

Many responses to these questions were either defensive or nostalgic. We wanted something different. We wanted to strip away ideology and geopolitics and assess the Internet not as it should be, but as it is — technically, practically, and globally.

The result was a framework of four dimensions of success:

• Scalability to support global growth
• Flexibility across heterogeneous technologies
• Adaptability to new applications and services
• Resilience in the face of shocks and change

While each is essential, resilience — the Internet’s capacity to endure disruption and change — stood out as the most critical to preserve.

The Fragility Beneath the Strength

The study showed that the Internet’s resilience is enabled not by rigid controls, but by design freedom. It works because it allows failure, then routes around it. Protocols like BGP and systems like DNS are inherently flexible — but also exposed. Operational practices and community collaboration carry as much weight as protocol specs. The openness of standards allows diverse vendors and networks to coexist. The layering model allows innovation to happen at the edge without needing permission from the core.

However, that same flexibility hides deeper fragilities. Dependencies on power, centralised services, and outdated open-source components are growing. The ideals of openness and decentralisation are under pressure from fragmentation, regulation, and ossifying security models. The Internet is adapting, but its foundations are showing strain.

Resilience Through Collaboration

In 2024, the Marconi Society brought together 30 global experts to discuss Internet resilience in depth. The findings not only reaffirmed the Analysys Mason framework, but added a sharper lens on today’s emerging risks:

• Regulation is now a main stressor. Governments want accountability, fast fixes, and control. The traditional model of fixing things as they break is no longer politically tenable.
• Complexity is a silent threat. Modern apps depend on dozens of APIs and third-party services. The Internet's resilience is undermined by software supply chains few fully understand.
• Funding preventative measures is still a challenge. As one participant said: “Resilience is a prevention problem, and prevention doesn’t attract money.”
• Dependencies are circular and invisible. Power grids need the Internet to run; the Internet needs power to function. DNS depends on BGP; BGP depends on DNS. These feedback loops can collapse without warning.

The Marconi Society's experts group called for specific actions:

• Develop resilience certification frameworks (akin to badges for readiness)
• Define clear accountability structures across executive, technical, and regulatory levels
• Create sustainable funding for core infrastructure like RPKI validators and OpenSSL
• Promote operational practices like "Always Be Rolling" to normalize live patching and recovery
• Invest in talent development and cross-sector collaboration

Resilience Needs Champions, Not Just Engineers

Both studies converge on one conclusion: Resilience is a shared responsibility.

If we take resilience for granted, we risk losing it. And unlike performance metrics or speed benchmarks, resilience is often invisible — until it fails.

Resilience must be:

• Studied, through independent frameworks and cross-sector learning
• Funded, especially where invisible dependencies hide catastrophic risks, for example, in critical areas like routing security, and DNS resilience
• Practiced, through collaborative exercises, improved incident response, and cultural shifts;
• Championed, not just in the technical community, but at board tables and government cabinets

It is a shared asset — and a shared responsibility.

The Call to Action

We owe much to the pioneers who shaped the Internet with design principles of layering, network-of-networks and end-to-end principles. But that legacy isn’t self-sustaining. It demands constant tending. It requires alliances. It requires policies grounded in technical reality. And it requires humility — because the Internet’s resilience is not magic, it's effort. And now more than ever, it demands renewed collaboration, not just across networks, but across sectors, regions, and political divides.

But whether its next chapter holds together — or falls apart — depends on whether we’re ready to  treat resilience not as an assumption, but as a priority.

Resilience is not the absence of failure. It is the ability to continue, to adapt, to rebuild. That’s the Internet’s story. But whether that story continues is up to us.