ICANN75 – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – September 21, 2022.
The plenary session was an attempt to contribute to the emergence of a shared understanding of Internet fragmentation and to provide a space for an inclusive dialogue and reflection on the challenges it presents to the ICANN community.
Fragmentation as a concept is not new and while it is unlikely that in the near future any country will cut off itself completely from the universal open internet due to the economic and political disadvantages of doing so, it is a grave mistake not to take the current trends in that direction seriously.
Particularly concerning are trends toward multiple and incompatible root zone files and associated naming and numbering systems. The DNS root is at the center of contention because it is a centralized point of control on the logic layer. Other concerns are over changes in the routing architecture; and the spread of incompatible technical standards.
