INTERNET FRAGMENTATION - A REALITY THAT CAN ENDANGER AND SHAPE THE INTERNET'S FUTURE

Abstract

The Internet as we know it today, an open, all accessible ‘global village’ was nothing but a large area network connecting different nodes and transferring data using packets instead of circuits. In September 1969 for the first time ever, 2 nodes were connected and the first ‘host to host’ message was sent. It was called ARPANET and it implemented for the first time the TCP/IP protocol, both technologies combined became the basis for what we know as the ‘Internet’ today. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which could be accessed via the internet.  Over time, the Internet has evolved as an all connecting network which is known for it’s traits of being open, diverse, accessible and interoperable. The Internet has creeped into our lives and has become an integral part. Globally connecting people, states, it has helped the global economy grow making cross border trades easy and within reach. Though now, these same traits of the internet are becoming a cause for its vulnerabilities. With the growth of technology, the openness and accessibility traits of the internet are now being misused by various agencies for covert intelligence, cyber warfare, hacking, cyber attacks etc. The states are now looking at the openness of the internet as a threat to their national cyber security and are scouting for various measures they can undertake to prevent such threats and one of them being creation of separate national internets or as Crews 2001 calls them ‘Splinternets’ which are Parallel internets ‘where prespecified ground rules regarding privacy and other governance issues replace regulation and central planning-may be superior. What matters most is not necessarily the Internet as it exists today, but Internet technology.’