U.S. no longer global Internet hub

In Labo[u]r Day's IT Blogwatch, we wonder why we don't see so much international Internet traffic crossing U.S. borders these day. Not to mention a Gustav resource miscellany...

John Markoff starts off:

The era of the American Internet is ending. Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States.
...
[But] it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control. And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.
...
While the United States carried 70 percent of the world’s Internet traffic a decade ago ... Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota ... estimates that portion has fallen to about 25 percent ... the eclipse of the United States as the central point in cyberspace is one of many indicators that the world is becoming a more level playing field both economically and politically.

David Rothman adds:

Odlyzko [is] a well-regarded specialist in these matters ... Just the decentralized nature of the Internet means that America can’t control the beast forever. But Luddites in D.C. are unwittingly speeding up the decline.
...
To [the reasons why] I’d add Hollywood-bought copyright legislation, which, come to think of it, ties in. Pampering big movie-makers counts more than copyright reforms that would aid the many-to-many model, one way to spur demand for optic fiber. And Hollywood is hardly the only villain here.
...
Bottom line? In many ways America is less friendly to technology than to Hollywood studios ... even content-oriented businesses such as Hollywood and the U.S. news organizations will suffer long term—because the popularity of content reflects the ease which which it can be accessed.

Steven Hodson worries:

Not that long ago universities in Canada were seriously considering moving the US based servers they were using for research for more localized options. Their concerns revolved around the US Patriot Act and the immense powers for surveillance of activity within the US Internet infrastructure.
...
Other countries are beginning to realize that the Internet is an integral part of their economic development. This means that they are wanting to start gaining control of how the Internet enters and leaves their countries.

Along with that there are growing concerns outside of the US about how it’s intelligence agencies believe that they need to have access to all the data that flows through the Internet. This doesn’t sit well with a lot of countries.

Mikel Kirk channels John Gilmore:

The internet is a redundant fault tolerant network. It routes around damage. Censorship is damage. Monitoring is damage. Theft of the commons by rights holders is damage. What did they think was going to happen?

And spazador expands:

The potential for exposure of Internet traffic to US snooping creates a a very powerful regulatory force against a particular class of speech on the Internet. So the Internet follows the above rule, grows away from us, and very soon we're at the edge of the network.

Hopefully we'll bounce back once end-to-end encryption is ubiquitous for all Internet protocols and the whole point is moot. (Which will be pretty soon, thanks to a technological arms race being prosecuted by our reigning copyright regime!)

But Beryllium Sphere thinks that's naive:

Traffic analysis without cracking crypto is a huge and valuable source of intelligence. Knowing who's talking to whom is something spies really want to know, and it's something the people talking would often hate to have revealed. For a small-scale, down to earth example, look at the HP pretexting scandal.

So Doc Ruby gets back to the point:

The Internet isn't supposed to have a "hub". It's supposed to be completely distributed and decentralized ... The world is a globe, which doesn't have a center. Why should Europe / East Asia connections pass through the US? Let them build their share of the interconnects. They've got way more people, and we need all our bandwidth for ourselves, just like anyone else.

The US ... should be exporting equipment and expertise, so the rest of the world can do business with us (and with each other our way), and get paid right to do it.

And finally...

• Zeni Jardin's secret garden of Hurricane Gustav resources

Buffer overflow:

• Xeni Jardin: Who scrubbed Wikipedia's entry for Sarah Palin just before nom announcement?
• Don Reisinger: Opinion: How Apple can gain significant OS market share
• Erick Schonfeld: The Net Neutrality Debate All On One Page

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Don Tennant: Gig'em, Aggies!
• Mike Elgan: Gusav: A 'perfect storm' for Twitter
• Mike Elgan: Microsoft Windows Mobile "app store" to be called Skymarket
• Mike Elgan: My cell phone-based exercise program
• John Brandon: Web sites to help those displaced by Gustav
• Seth Weintraub: September iPhone update 2.1..all about bug fixes
• Barbara Krasnoff: Old NEC tech: How the great have fallen
• Mike Elgan: People over 30 hate cell phones
• John Brandon: How to monetize Twitter right now
• Shark Tank: Isn't that what you asked for?
• Shark Tank: The color purple
• Shark Bait: Simple directions

Like this stuff? Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 22 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• ALT="Target's task: tags to add"
• Cisco gobbles Exchange-a-like vendor PostPath
• Mac OS bigger in business (but still small)