The Role of Network Centralization in Shaping Digital Sovereignty: An
Analysis Under the DNS Lens
Abstract
Centralization of Internet-based services in few key players has been a
topic of study in recent years. One of such services, the Domain Name
System (DNS), is one of the pillars of the Internet, which allows users
to access websites on the Internet through easy-to-remember domain names
rather than complex numeric IP addresses. In this DNS context, the
reliance on a small number of large DNS providers can lead to (a) risks
of data breaches and disruption of service in the event of failures and
(b) concerns about the digital sovereignty of countries regarding DNS
hosting. As several essential services are provided through
Electronic-Government (E-Gov), it is highly important to be able to
measure the digital sovereignty of a nation and the impacts that the
lack of such feature can bring to its citizens. This work approaches the
issue of DNS concentration on the Internet by presenting a solution to
measure DNS hosting centralization and digital sovereignty in different
countries, such as Brazil, India, China, Russia, and South Africa. With
the data obtained through these measurements, relevant questions are
answered, such as which are the top-10 DNS providers, if there is DNS
centralization, and how dependent countries are on such providers to
manage domains using their country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD).
Future opportunities could investigate the impacts on sovereignty under
the lens of other layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)
Network Sovereignty representation model presented in this work.